The BIOS manufacturer and the BIOS version will determine the BIOS settings available for a particular server. The following settings are provided as a guideline for optimizing the BIOS for an ESXi installation. Ask the hardware vendor for recommendations on settings that are specific to the hardware and BIOS versions:
- Enable Intel VTx or AMD-V
- Enable Intel Extended Page Tables (EPT) or AMD Rapid Virtualization Indexing (RVI)
- Disable node interleaving if the system supports Non-Uniform Memory
Architecture (NUMA) - Enable Turbo Boost if the processor supports it
- Enable Hyper-Threading (HT) if it's supported by the processor
- Set Intel Execute Disable (XD) or AMD No Execute (NX) to Yes
- Set power saving features to OS Control Mode
- Enable the C1E halt state
- Disable any unnecessary hardware or features (floppy controllers, serial ports, USB controllers, and so on)