Are ESXi 5 VMware Tools compatiable with ESXi 4 hosts?

[FCDerek]

If a VM created on ESXi 5 were to be migrated to an ESXi 4 host, would the tools work properly?  Are they backwards compatiable?

Alternatively, will ESXi 4 VMware tools work properly when migrated to an ESXi 5 host?

[vmroyale · Accepted solution]

Hello and welcome to the forums.

Yes, 4-5 and 5-4 are fully compatible.

Good Luck!

[FCDerek]

Great, thanks for the quick reply!

[JimPeluso]

That's not entirely true....

If a VM has hardware version 8, created by an ESXi 5 server, it is not compatible to run on a ESXi 4 host.

http://pubs.vmware.com/vsphere-50/topic/com.vmware.vsphere.upgrade.doc_50/GUID-7FCEB7A7-43E2-48AF-B2...

[vmroyale]

The OP specifically asked about VMware Tools, not virtual hardware versions. The Tools are compatible across versions, as detailed here:

http://pubs.vmware.com/vsphere-50/index.jsp?topic=/com.vmware.vsphere.upgrade.doc_50/GUID-7FCEB7A7-4...

[JimPeluso]

I understand that,

but the OP also stated a VM created on ESXi5. Which by default would be VM hardware version 8.

ps we linked to the same article....

[FCDerek]

My apologies, I should have been a lot more detailed.  I'll bear the blame for this, sorry for any confusion.

I am building a virtual machine on ESXi 5 using hardware version 7 for compatibility when running on vSphere 4 and 5.

The overall goal is to have a sysprep'd Windows 2008 R2 SP1 image with VMware tools that are supported and will work on both platforms, but mainly on vSphere 4 as it's our current production environment.

I would be making this on our production environment, but we are experiencing space issues that prevent this.

So yes, my original question was answered, but I do appreciate the addition heads up on the hardware version.  Sometimes I don't throughly read the notes on the screens and just click next... but this time I read them and thankfully they were concise and informative.