Upload OS X Yosemite VM to ESXi or vSphere

[kscottmyers]

Can someone explain how this is done? I can't seem to figure out how to downgrade the hardware version to allow for compatibility with ESXi. Anything other than version 11 says the guest OS is unsupported. And version 11 is unsupported for ESXi.

[avanish321]

To downgrade the hardware version of any VM, go to Virtual Machine > Settings > Compatibility : Advanced options

[ColoradoMarmot]

One note:  You can only do this if ESXi or VSphere is running on Apple hardware.

[kscottmyers]

I know where to go to do - it just doesn't let you. Once again - anything other than version 11 says the guest OS is unsupported. And version 11 is unsupported for ESXi.

[kscottmyers]

Understood - this is going up on a Mac min running ESXi 5.5.

[avanish321]

ESXi 55 supports HW 10 ( max ).

So any VM, if you want to be able to transfer to esxi, its hardware version should be set to 10.

But again, in Fusion, support for OSX 10.10 is provided only under HW 11.

So uploading of 10.10 VM to esxi is not yet supported .

I do have one suggestion which you may try .

Note: Make a full clone or backup your VM before trying this.

1. Change the Guest OS template of the Virtual Machine to 10.9 ( Mavericks ) . This can be done by going to Virtual Machine settings > General . Change OS.

2. Set the HW compatibility to 10.  Try powering on this VM and see if its booting fine.

3. Shutdown the VM

4. Now try uploading it to esxi.