An administrator is troubleshooting a performance problem with a virtual machine (VM). The VM and ESXi host configuration is as follows: - The application which runs within the virtual machine is…

Setting numa.vcpu.preferHT = TRUE instructs the ESXi NUMA scheduler to prefer scheduling vCPUs on hyperthreaded siblings within the same NUMA node rather than spreading across nodes. With 8 logical CPUs per socket and HT enabled, all 6 vCPUs can fit within one NUMA node, eliminating costly cross-NUMA remote memory accesses that directly harm latency-sensitive workloads.

Setting numa.vcpu.preferHT = FALSE tells the scheduler to avoid hyperthreaded placements, which can force the 6 vCPUs to span both NUMA nodes and increase remote memory latency for the latency-sensitive application.

numa.PreferHT is not a valid ESXi host-level configuration parameter; the correct advanced setting is numa.vcpu.preferHT, which must be applied per-VM in the virtual machine's advanced configuration - not in the ESXi host config file.

numa.PreferHT = 0 is not a valid ESXi host configuration parameter, and host-level settings of this form cannot target the NUMA scheduling behavior needed for a specific VM.