Setting the Hardware Serial Number on a Mac VM on ESXi 5.5

[dockeradz]

Is it possible to set the Hardware Serial Number on a Mac VM in ESXi 5.5?  A serial number is generated but it's not compatibile with some apple services.  Like the Caching Service and iMessage.  That has to be stored somewhere right?

[dariusd · Accepted solution]

Hi dockeradz,

We have a facility to generate a "short" serial number which should be suitable for recent Apple software.  The option is enabled by default for OS X 10.9 guests.  To enable it for earlier guest OS versions, you'll need to power off your virtual machine and edit its configuration to add the following option:

   SMBIOS.use12CharSerialNumber = "TRUE"

When you power on the VM, go into  > About this Mac, click twice on the OS X version string, and verify that the serial number shown is not longer than 12 characters.

Hope this helps!

--

Darius

[jmay]

Where does this specifically get set?  Is it under Options -> Advanced -> General -> Configuration Parameters?  If so, I assume Name is "SMBIOS.use12CharSerialNumber" and Value is "TRUE"?

Also, will this work on ESXi 5.1?

Thanks!

[dariusd]

The option is not available on ESXi 5.1.

I generally edit the VM config file directly :smileydevil: but the steps you describe should do the job too.

Cheers,

--

Darius

[dariusd]

Hmmmm... iMessage still doesn't work, even with that option.

We've got an open bug report tracking the issue.

--

Darius

[jmay]

Can one just disable the Caching and iMessage services and have Mavericks work fine with ESXi 5.1?

[dockeradz]

You can add

SMBIOS.use12CharSerialNumber = "TRUE"

to the bottom the vmx file for the virtual machine. 

This only works in ESXi 5.5.

In VCenter web client (Who uses that right?) there is an option for 10.9 in the New Virtual Machine Wizard.

The 12 Character Serial...while doesn't look like an Apple sn...does allow Caching Server to work.

Thanks for your help!

[supremehumper]

how can ido this manually?

[Quiggley]

So where would you set this in Fusion on a MAC?

[Quiggley]

I ran into this issue with Fusion 7.  It was an easy fix.  You have to right click on the VM file(when it is off) and choose show package contents.  Edit the .vmx file by adding the following line at the end.  serialNumber = xxxxxxxxxxxx  That is just a 12 character alphanumeric number.  Just randomly make one up.  Letters and numbers only.  NO QUOTES.

Save it and restart machine.  If you go into the about menu of your VM MAC you should see the same number there.

That was all it took.  iMessage worked no problem after that.  (El Capitan)