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vSphere 8.0 Update 1c resolves Windows VBS performance & Hyper-V Generation 2 Nested VM running on AMD CPU

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vSphere 8.0 Update 1c was just released and one of the resolved issues mentioned in the ESXi release notes is the following:

Nested virtual machines on AMD CPUs with operational systems such as Windows with virtualization-based security (VBS) might experience performance degradation, timeouts, or unresponsiveness due to an issue with the virtualization of AMD's Rapid Virtualization Indexing (RVI), also known as Nested Page Tables (NPT).

UPDATE (10/11/23) - This is also resolved in the ESXi 7.0 Update 3o release

There are two scenarios in which this fix resolves:

  1. Running Windows Server VM with a Hyper-V enabled Generation 2 VM (Nested Virtualization) on AMD CPU
  2. Running Windows Server VM with VBS Enabled (Non-Nested VM) on AMD CPU

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Refresher on Nested ESXi Networking Requirements

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Using Nested Virtualization and specifically Nested ESXi, which is running ESXi inside of a VM, has become so automatic and second nature for me and many in the VMware community, that I sometimes forget we still have brand new users who are experiencing ESXi for the very first time.

Nested ESXi is an extremely powerful capability for so many different use cases from development, testing and general learning purposes. Before jumping in and deploying your Nested ESXi environment, which I highly recommend using my Nested ESXi Virtual Appliances, you need to make sure that you have proper networking setup or you will run into all sorts of strange issues. For all VMware Nested Virtualization resources, tips and tricks, you will definitely want to bookmark this page HERE.

Disclaimer: Nested Nested ESXi is not officially supported by VMware and Nested Virtualization is only supported under limited scenarios. For more details, please refer to this VMware KB 2009916.

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Enabling vSAN 8 Express Storage Architecture (ESA) using Nested ESXi

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To get the full benefits and support of the new vSAN 8 Express Storage Architecture (ESA), you will need modern hardware from the official vSAN ESA Ready Node HCL. However, from an education and learning point of view, you may want to explore some of the VSAN ESA workflows and easiest way to do that, well you probably know the answer .... it is using Nested ESXi of course!

With my recently published vSphere and vSAN 8 Lab Deployment Script, you can use that as the base and the Nested ESXi 8.0 IA Virtual Appliance to setup vSAN 8 ESA using virtual hardware 😀


There are only a couple of things to be aware of prior to setting up vSAN ESA using Nested ESXi.

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