Virtual device PCI slot changes upon upgrade from hardware version 19

Products

• VMware vSphere ESXi

Issue/Introduction

Symptoms:
When a Virtual Machine, created with hardware version 19 and configured with EFI firmware, is upgraded to a newer hardware version, the PCI device addresses of virtual devices in the Virtual Machines may change. This will potentially cause the guest OS to not apply configurations that are meant for a PCI device at a particular address.

Environment

VMware vSphere ESXi 8.0.2
VMware vSphere ESXi 8.0
VMware vSphere ESXi 8.0.1

Cause

A VMX configuration option is mistakenly applied for Virtual Machines created with hardware version 19 and using EFI firmware. This option does not take effect for hardware version 19 Virtual Machines, but takes effect for hardware version 20 or later. The effect of the configuration option is that the Virtual Machine's PCI devices may be assigned different PCI device addresses.

Resolution

Currently there is no resolution to the issue. This will be resolved in the future releases.

Workaround:

To workaround the issue, please ensure before the Virtual Machine is upgraded from hardware version 19, the line chipset.motherboardLayout = "acpi" is removed from the VMX config file while the Virtual Machine is powered Off.