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vCloud Director based virtual machine virtual hardware

Yesterday i received an email from a customer asking me why Virtual Machine (VM) VM version 10  was not available for his vCloud Director (vCD), version 5,5, based virtual machines. My customer was able to upgrade his vSphere based virtual machine to the most recent virtual hardware version and both types of VMs were hosted on vSphere 5.5.

The below figure shows the present VM virtual hardware for a vCD based VM seen from the vSphere Web Client.
Screen Shot 2013-09-25 at 22.41.10

The below figure shows that the “Upgrade Virtual Hardware Version” is not available through vCD for the VM since it is greyed out.
Screen Shot 2013-09-25 at 22.36.14

The VM virtual hardware levels available for vCD based VMs are managed by the vCD Provider Virtual Datacenter (PvDC) backing the vCD Organization Virtual Datacenter (Org vDC) where the VMs runs.
Verifying the present PvDC “Highest supported hardware version” explains why my customer can not upgrade his vCD based VM hardware version to hardware version 10.
Screen Shot 2013-09-25 at 22.35.04

I changed the PvDC “Highest supported hardware version” configuration to Hardware version 10.
Screen Shot 2013-09-25 at 22.35.18

After the PvDC reconfiguration my customer was able to upgrade his vCD based VM hardware to hardware version 10.
Screen Shot 2013-09-25 at 22.39.56

After the VM hardware upgrade the VM version 10 is shown for the vCD based VM in the vSphere Web Client.
Screen Shot 2013-09-25 at 22.42.15

Conclusion

After upgrading your vCD environment to version 5.5 make sure you change the PvDC configuration “Highest supported hardware version” to Hardware Version 10 to make it available for the vCD based virtual machines.