What could restrict a vSphere operator to configure only two virtual CPUs when deploying a new VM?

When deploying a new virtual machine (VM) in a vSphere environment, the configuration options available to an operator can be influenced by the underlying hardware resources. In this scenario, if the selected ESXi host has only 2 physical CPUs, the operator is limited to configuring a maximum of two virtual CPUs for the VM. This is due to the fact that the number of virtual CPUs assigned to a VM cannot exceed the number of physical CPUs present on the host, as the virtual CPUs are ultimately mapped to the physical resources of the ESXi host.

If there were more physical CPUs in the host, the operator would have had the opportunity to configure more than two virtual CPUs, assuming no other constraints were present.

The other options do not directly relate to the limitation of configuring only two virtual CPUs. For instance, the DRS mode of a cluster or the compatibility settings would not restrict the number of virtual CPUs based solely on the underlying hardware’s capacity. Therefore, the correct reasoning ties directly to the physical CPU limitations of the selected ESXi host.