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Quick Tip: Reducing High CPU Utilization on NSX due to slow Entropy from AMD Zen4/5 CPUs

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AMD Zen4/Zen5 processors have been known to have slower entropy generation, which can lead to higher CPU utilization for workloads that depend on random number generation. I recently learned from a colleague (Ross Wynne) about a simple optimization for NSX Manager that can significantly reduce CPU utilization when running on AMD Zen4/Zen5 processors.

Shut down your NSX Manager VM and add the following VM Advanced Setting. This allows the guest operating system to retrieve entropy directly from the ESXi host, which already includes optimizations for entropy generation on AMD Zen4 and Zen5 processors.

isolation.tools.getEntropy.disable = FALSE


Note: Ensure you have applied the recommended entropySource configuration for your physical ESX host in addition to this configuration change.

In my limited testing, I have observed the NSX Manager load average drop to less than 5, whereas it was consistently much higher before applying this optimization. I will continue to monitor my environment, but this is definitely a worthwhile optimization to add to your VCF homelab toolkit.

VCF 9.1 - Quick Tip: Easily Generate VCF SSO API Tokens using VCF Component UI

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VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) 9.1 Single Sign-On (SSO) not only provides a unified login experience across all VCF components, but it also enables organizations to easily add multi-factor authentication (MFA) to protect their VCF infrastructure using modern identity providers that support OIDC or SAML 2.0.

Another benefit of configuring VCF SSO in 9.1 is the ability to create and use VCF SSO API Tokens for automation purposes. Rather than hardcoding passwords in scripts, API Tokens provide a more secure authentication mechanism and can be centrally managed and revoked whenever needed.

Once VCF SSO has been configured, you can easily generate a new VCF SSO API Token from the UI of any VCF component by right-clicking on your username and select Generate API Token.

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VCF 9.1 - Deploying the VCF License Server Directly to an ESX Host

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For most customers, a single VCF License Server, which is automatically deployed as part of a VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) or VMware vSphere Foundation (VVF) deployment, is sufficient to provide centralized license management for all VCF components. A single VCF License Server and VCF Operations instance can manage both VCF and VVF entitlements, so deploying additional VCF License Servers provides no additional benefit.


While additional VCF License Servers (LS) can certainly be deployed, the primary use cases are replacing an existing VCF LS or supporting extreme edge deployments where vCenter Server has limited connectivity to the primary data center and requires a VCF LS to be co-located with the edge deployment.

The VCF LS is provided as a virtual appliance in OVA format. The typical deployment workflow uses vCenter Server, where the VCF LS uses OVF properties, like most virtual appliances, to configure itself during deployment.

With that said, if you need to deploy the VCF LS directly to an ESX host, this is certainly possible using OVF Tool, which can inject the required OVF properties as part of the deployment workflow.

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