NSX bare metal edge offline cpu

Products

• VMware NSX

Issue/Introduction

When logged in as root and running lscpu the edge shows half of the available cores as offline.

Environment

NSX 

Cause

This is due to the bare metal edge using the default cpu power setting by the chassis. 

Resolution

Depending on your hardware vendor, you will have to make a BIOS power change. In a dell configuration as below the default setting is Performance Per Watt (DAPC) which lets the BIOS control cpu power states. Linux often fails to properly interface with this proprietary BIOS-level management layer, leading to throttled frequencies, missing turbo boosts, or misreported core availability. To resolve this you must either select Performance Per Watt (OS) or Performance. The system will then require a reboot for the change to take effect. 

Similarly C-States: Disable C-states (and C1E) in the system BIOS. Allowing CPU cores to drop into deep idle power-saving states (like C6) can introduce latency, packet drops, or data-plane unresponsiveness under high-throughput or extended uptimes.