Recently, Adcap Network Systems hosted a technical deep-dive called #Geeknicks into vSphere 5.5 (yours truly was the presenter). For those unable to attend, and because those who attended, statistically, only retained about 5–10%, I am covering much of the material here in a new series of posts. To view all the posts in this series, click Geeknicks in the categories list.
Gotcha 1: VM Hardware Version 10
With the release of vSphere 5.5 and ESXi 5.5, there was a corresponding revision upgrade of virtual machine hardware to version 10. Here is a summary of VM hardware versions and their ESXi or ESX compatibility (for the full list, see VMware KB 1003746):
10 5.5
9 5.1
8 5.0
7 4.x
4 3.x
So, should you upgrade? Here's the first gotcha. And it's a big enough gotcha that there is VMware KB 2061336 to address it! If you upgrade, you will incur two potentially problematic issues:
10 5.5
9 5.1
8 5.0
7 4.x
4 3.x
So, should you upgrade? Here's the first gotcha. And it's a big enough gotcha that there is VMware KB 2061336 to address it! If you upgrade, you will incur two potentially problematic issues:
- The VM will only be editable in the vSphere Web Client; the legacy (desktop) client will allow you to view but not edit the hardware.
- This is especially problematic if you don't have a good vCenter implementation (which you should) or have some standalone hosts...you won't be able to manage them the way in which you are accustomed.
- If you have a standalone host, you will have to use the vCLI or Power CLI to manage the VMs on that host; the only supported GUI is the vSphere 5.5 Web Client.
vSphere 5.5 | VM Hardware v10 Warning
Tomorrow: Gotcha.02 | SSO and Inventory Permissions
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