ESXi

i found out that there are some IDs associated to the CPUIDs in vmx file of each virtual machine, these IDs are;

hostCPUID.{Num}

hostCPUID.80000001 

guestCPUID.{Num}

guestCPUID.80000001

userCPUID.{Num}

userCPUID.80000001

i had some examination and search and i found out that guestCPUID and userCPUID are the same but hostCPUID always is different, Also i realized that these IDs are 32 hexadecimal characters that contains EDX, EAX, ECX  and EDX

i just want to know why hostCPUID is different from two other IDs??

and what is the different between these format of IDs and another format that explain in VMware documents ( cpuid.{Num}.edx or cpuid.{Num}.eax ) that written in binary codes not hexadecimal??

also i need to know why there are no CPUIDs in vmx file of some virtual appliance that often are available in OVF/OVA format and we can just deploy it??

Best Regards,

See .

Hey thank you mattson that was really helpfull but a little complex, is there any document that explain this IDs in detail??

and i want to know why some virtual appliances does not have any CPUIDs in their  vmx file??

For Intel CPUs, you should see http://www.intel.com/content/dam/www/public/us/en/documents/manuals/64-ia-32-architectures-software-developer-vol-2a-manual.pdf.  For AMD CPUs, you should see http://support.amd.com/TechDocs/25481.pdf.

If a virtual appliance has no CPUID information, I would assume it has no CPU constraints.

actually we had very good discussion recently and i really appreciate for your response and care dear Mattson, i want you know i'm absolutely not interested in what features or functions supported by which CPU or which version of  virtual hardware. All i need to know is what CPUIDs deiver to a Virtual Machine / Appliance and how can i change them to some how defeat a specific VM to receive IDs that probably are not same with actual ESXi host IDs that VM deployed on it.

Best Regards,

There is nothing in the CPUID information that uniquely identifies your CPU, if that's what you're getting at. 

are you sure about that??

so what unique IDs in the Virtual machine i can refer to for protecting license agreement of my developed software from violating via cloning or copying a licensed virtual machine  to many ESXi hosts without any extra payment??

i need something more reliable than MAC Address or UUID

amircsco wrote:

are you sure about that??

100%

so what unique IDs in the Virtual machine i can refer to for protecting license agreement of my developed software from violating via cloning or copying a licensed virtual machine  to many ESXi hosts without any extra payment??

i need something more reliable than MAC Address or UUID

I suggest you look into third party tools for this.  I can't recommend any specifically, but a Google search for "license software for VM" reveals some potential candidates.