Debian 9 guest operating system option not available during VM creation

Products

• VMware vCenter Server
• VMware vSphere ESXi

Issue/Introduction

Symptoms:
During the process of creating or editing a virtual machine, you see these symptoms:

• No selection for Debian 9 is available.
• This affects VMs with a virtual hardware version < 13.

Environment

VMware vSphere ESXi 6.0
VMware vSphere ESXi 6.5
VMware vSphere ESXi 6.7

Resolution

To resolve this issue:

For ESXi 6.0.x

Select Debian GNU/Linux 8 as Guest OS.
Note: vSphere 6.0 supports virtual hardware version up to 11.

For ESXi 6.5.x and 6.7.x

Use virtual hardware version 13 and later.

Notes:

• The VMware Compatibility Guide is the authority on supported configurations of third-party hardware and software, including Guest Operating Systems, certified with vSphere/ESXi releases. In the VMware Compatibility Guide, you will find that support for Debian 9 was introduced with vSphere/ESXi 6.0.
• The best practice for configuration of a virtual machine is to use the Guest OS selection that best matches the operating system running in the virtual machine. However, an exact match may not be available for a specific operating system. Typically, this is a result of cases where a new operating system was released after a particular vSphere release already became generally available. In such cases, the result of successful certification testing for new operating system releases is published in the VMware Compatibility Guide along links to KB articles with any special guidance, including the use of an alternate guest operating selections where an exact match is not available.