Determining if Intel Virtualization Technology or AMD Virtualization is enabled in the BIOS without rebooting the ESXi host

Products

• VMware vCenter Server
• VMware vSphere ESXi

Issue/Introduction

When troubleshooting vMotion, Enhanced vMotion Capability (EVC), or 64bit virtual machine performance, it may be needed to determine if the Intel Virtualization Technology (VT) or AMD Virtualization (AMD-V) are enabled in the BIOS.

Resolution

1. Connect to ESXi via SSH as root user.
2. Run either of the two commands below.
   
   vsish -e cat /hardware/cpu/cpuInfo

esxcfg-info|grep "\----\HV Support"
   
   
3. The output of the HV Support command indicates the type of Hyper-visor support available. The descriptions for the possible values are below.
   
   0 - VT/AMD-V indicates that support is not available for this hardware.
   1 - VT/AMD-V indicates that VT or AMD-V might be available but it is not supported for this hardware.
   2 - VT/AMD-V indicates that VT or AMD-V is available but is currently not enabled in the BIOS.
   3 - VT/AMD-V indicates that VT or AMD-V is enabled in the BIOS and can be used.

For more information, see Ensuring Virtualization Technology is enabled on your VMware host.