Web Client needed to edit virtual machine settings

[neildeadman]

We have several VMware environments that I help to manage. So that we can train junior members on using VMware, we have a few standalone hosts running v5.5u1.

One of my colleagues copied a VM built with Workstation 10 to this host and received an error about the VMDK being invalid. They tried to resolve the issue by getting the host to upgrade the VM. The VM now shows as being "VM Version: vmx-10".

The network for this VM is set to not connect at power on, so we have no networking on this VM. If we right-click the VM in vSphere Client and choose Edit Settings, we receive this message:

"You cannot use vSphere Client to edit the settings of virtual machines of version 10 or higher.

Use the vSphere Web Client to edit the settings of this virtual machine."

I know the Web Client for standalone hosts wasn't available on 5.1, and I imagine this is the same with 5.5. Is this correct? My attempts at trying to load a page like that fails.

Is there a command that I can use to "downgrade" the VM version to one where I can edit the settings with vSphere Client?

Its not great that you can do this and then end up stuck without being able to edit the VM settings. Surely they could detect if the host is connected to a vCenter and only allow that option if it is.... or warn before you perform the upgrade!

Thanks,

Neil

[Linjo · Accepted solution]

You can simply edit the vmx-file and change vmx-10 to vmx-9.

// Linjo

[neildeadman]

Thank you Linjo!

Slightly different in that my vmx file had virtualHW.version = "10" and I changed that to "9", but it worked

[dhanarajramesh]

Scenario 1: You upgraded your VM from hardware version 9 (vmx-09) to 10 and want to roll back to version 9 (vmx-09):   1)  Shut down the virtual machine in the vSphere client.   2) Remove your virtual machine from the ESXi inventory.     3) Browse your Datastore and find the virtual machine’s .vmx file.  Download it to your desktop.     4)Open the .vmx file in Notepad or your favorite text editor.   5)  Find the following line (usually line 3) in your configuration and change the “10″ to a “9″   6)  virtualHW.version = “10″ will become virtualHW.version = “9″   7)  Save the file and overwrite your existing .vmx file. 😎  Upload the file to the same location your downloaded the file from in step 3.     9)Add the machine to inventory and start it up.