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Retrieving and translating CPUID features for a vSphere VM

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Whether you are using the classic Enhanced vMotion Compatibility (EVC) on a vSphere Cluster or the new Per-VM EVC capability, the usable (user-level) CPU features from an ESXi host are then presented down into a Virtual Machine for consumption.

If you wanted to see what which CPU features are exposed for a particular VM or even custom CPU compatibility mask which hides certain CPU features, you can do so by using the vSphere API and accessing either the FeatureRequirement or FeatureMask properties, depending if Per-VM EVC is configured or not. The results from the vSphere API is a list of CPUID strings that may or may not be easy to translate to the friendly CPU processor feature name.

While doing some testing, I noticed that for VMs configured with Per-VM EVC, rather than listing out the CPUID strings, it actually lists the friendly CPU processor feature name.


I was not able to find any CPUID translator using the EvcManager API, but the vSphere UI must be getting this information somehow, right? After a bit of poking around in my vCenter Server Appliance (VCSA), I realized how this translation was occurring ...

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Custom vCenter Server Role using vSphere Terraform Provider on VMware Cloud on AWS

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In a VMware Cloud on AWS (VMC-A) environment, a default CloudAdmin vCenter Server Role is provided to customers to manage and deploy workloads in vCenter Server. Typically, this vCenter Server Role is only granted to limited number of Cloud Administrators within your organization, which you get to control as an end user.

VMware also supports customers in creating additional custom vCenter Server Roles that limits the privileges for other usage such as auditing or workload provisioning. If you create a custom vCenter Server Role for VM provisioning and you are using vSphere Automation Tools that VMware supports including PowerCLI or even the popular vSphere Terraform Provider, you may come across the following error message during the VM deployment:

System.Read privilege required for config.distributedVirtualSwitch


As you can see from the error message, the current user does not have the Read-only privilege assigned to the Virtual Distributed Switch (VDS) which is required by the automation client, in this case the vSphere Terraform Provider, to be able to properly provisioned a VM.

Note: When using the default CloudAdmin role, VMware automatically applies the correct privileges to all applicable vSphere Inventory objects and this is the reason you do not see this problem when using an account with the default CloudAdmin role. For custom vCenter Server Roles that are created by customers, we can not apply this automation as the intention of the custom role(s) are unknown to VMware.

We can quickly fix this issue by following the instructions below which will guide you in properly assigning the correct vSphere permissions to enable VM provisioning when using a non-CloudAdmin role.

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Beta for VMware Cloud Consumption Interface (CCI) formally Project Cascade

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When Project Pacific was first announced back in 2019, most of the focus was on Kubernetes and how it would be re-architected into vSphere, basically the "how" or the implementation details. As much as I enjoy diving into the tech, what really stood out to me about Project Pacific was the implication it would have on workload evolution for vSphere.

In fact, I wrote about this very topic in this blog post: Project Pacific - Workload Evolution in vSphere because I felt that most of the focus was only on the "how" but not the "why". Here is a quote from the blog that summarizes why I was excited for Project Pacific:

However, Project Pacific is actually more than just Kubernetes but with all the new lingo like Supervisor and Guest Clusters, one can easily get lost in the implementation or what I would refer to as the "how" part of Project Pacific. If you ask me, the "why" part is much more significant and Project Pacific is fundamentally re-defining what and how to deploy a workload in vSphere.

Fast forward to today, vSphere with Tanzu has been delivering on the vision of Project Pacific since its introduction with vSphere 7 back in 2020. Developers, DevOps and Platform Engineering teams can easily deploy workloads like Tanzu Kubernetes Grid Clusters (TKC) or Virtual Machines into a vSphere Cluster that has been enabled with vSphere with Tanzu, also known as a Supervisor Cluster.

While the current vSphere with Tanzu experience works well for most environments with a handful of Supervisor Clusters, but what happens when you need to support more users, teams and an increased number of Supervisor Clusters across different locations? How do you manage access control for these users and the compute resources that they can consume while providing a simple and intuitive developer ready interface? This is where VMware Cloud Consumption Interface (CCI), formally known as Project Cascade comes in!

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