Hardware features available with virtual machine compatibility settings

Products

• VMware vSphere ESXi

Issue/Introduction

Notice:  This Knowledge Base article is provided for historical reference and is no longer being actively maintained.

For the most accurate and up-to-date information regarding supported virtual machine compatibility features, please refer to the official vSphere product documentation:

Hardware Features Available with Virtual Machine Compatibility Settings

 

The virtual machine compatibility setting determines the virtual hardware available to the virtual machine, which corresponds to the physical hardware available on the host. You can review and compare the hardware available for different compatibility levels to determine whether to upgrade the virtual machines in your environment. For Virtual Machine Hardware version compatibility, see ESXi hosts and compatible virtual machine hardware versions list

Environment

VMware vSphere ESXi 6.5
VMware vSphere ESXi 7.0.0
VMware vSphere ESXi 6.0
VMware vSphere ESXi 6.7
VMware vSphere ESXi 5.0
VMware ESXi 4.1.x Installable
VMware ESXi 4.1.x Embedded
VMware vSphere ESXi 5.1
VMware vSphere ESXi 5.5

Resolution

Supported features for virtual machine compatibility

Hardware	ESXi 7.0 U2	ESXi 7.0 U1	ESXi 7.0	ESXi 6.7 U2	ESXi 6.7	ESXi 6.5 and later
Hardware version	19	18	17	15	14	13
Maximum memory (GB)	24512	24512	6128	6128	6128	6128
Maximum number of logical	768	768	256	256	128	128
processors
Maximum number of cores (virtual CPUs) per socket	64	64	64	64	64	64
Maximum SCSI adapters	4	4	4	4	4	4
Bus Logic adapters	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
LSI Logic adapters	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
LSI-Logic SAS adapters	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
SATA adapters	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
VMware Paravirtual controllers	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Virtual SCSI disk	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
SCSI passthrough	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
SCSI hot plug support	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
IDE nodes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes

 

Virtual IDE disk	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Virtual IDE CDROMs	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
IDE hot plug support	No	No	No	No	No	No
Maximum NICs	10	10	10	10	10	10
PCNet32	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
VMXNet	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
VMXNet2	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
VMXNet3	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
E1000	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
E1000e	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
USB 1.x and 2.0	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
USB 3.0	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
USB 3.1 SuperSpeedPlus	Yes	Yes	Yes	No	No	No

** Supported only for Passthrough from client computers to virtual machines on Linux, Windows 8 and later, and Windows Server 2012 and later guests.
* Supports 30 adapters

Additional Information

ESXi hosts and compatible virtual machine hardware versions list