Downgrade VMware Virtual Hardware Version

Note: According to VMware documentation, downgrading the hardware version of your vSphere virtual machine is unsupported. 

Mastering VMware vSphere 4 By Lowe, Scott (Google Affiliate Ad)

Recently, I found myself in a pinch and needing to quickly spin up a virtual guest on an ESXi 4.1 host. Unfortunately, the only template I had available for Windows Server 2008 R2 used virtual hardware 8 which is not compatible with ESXi 4.1. The notes below describe how I was able to downgrade the hardware version on a template from 8 to 7 and deploy a guest from that template.

There are three steps to downgrade the VMware hardware version on a template.

1. Remove the template from vCenter or host inventory (be careful not to delete it from disk).
2. Edit the .vmtx file and .vmdk pointer files.
3. Add the template back to the inventory.

In order to downgrade a VM template, you need to edit two files; a vmtx file and the vmdk pointer file. The simplest way to make these changes is from an SSH session on your ESXi host (or the ESXi console). After removing the template from inventory, navigate to the directory containing the VM template and open the .vmtx file in your favorite editor (like vi). Look for this line

virtualHW.version = "8"

and change it to

virtualHW.version = "7"

Save the changes to the vmtx file and find the pointer file to the vmdk. Open it with your editor and look for this line

ddb.virtualHWVersion = "8"

and change it to

ddb.virtualHWVersion = "7"

Now save this file and exit your editor. Add the template back to the inventory and test it out by deploying a VM guest from the template.

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