Downgrading ESX 4 VM to Run on ESX 3.5

[westyuk1]

We need to provision a number of VMs from our ESX 4 environmnet to a customer site running 3.5. The VMs have been successfully downgraded to the required version 4.0 using VMware Standalone Converter onto an external disk.

After adding the converted VMs up on the customer's 3.5 server it displays hardware version 4. However on powering up, the error message is displayed (also attached),

" The version of the virtual disk "/vmfs/volumes/xx/abc.vmdk" is newer than the version of ESX Server you are using. You need to update your copy of VMware ESX server in order to use this disk.

Cannot open the disk "vmfs/volumes/xx/abc.vmdk" or one of the snapshot disks it depends on.

Reason: The version of the virtual disk is newer than the version supported by this program."

I understood the VMs would work on an ESX 3.5 infrastructure as long as they were converted to hardware version 4.

Can anyone advise please?

edit: I've attached the current vmx file config of one the converted VMs

[RParker]

Just use converter to migrate the VM over to the 3.5 ESX server. It's probably because you did an ugrade of the VM hardware, not simply to change from Version 4 to Version 7.

2 different steps.

And as a side note, what's keeping you from simply upgrading the ESX server to 4.0?

[westyuk1]

Thanks for the response.

We downgraded from 7 to 4 but don't have any direct access into the customers network so cant put it straight onto their 3.5 infrastructure. This is why we converted onto external storage first.

In answer to your last question the client already has legacy 3.5 licenses which they want to use.

[weinstein5]

Welcome to the Forums - have you tried exporting the VMs out in OVF format and then importing them into the 3.5 environment rather than keeping them in their native format?

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[Kahonu84]

Aloha -

I don't understand your comment -

" It's probably because you did an ugrade of the VM hardware, not simply

to change from Version 4 to Version 7. 2 different steps."

Bill