The Guest OS information for a virtual machine is mismatched with the currently running guest OS

Products

• VMware Cloud Director

Issue/Introduction

For the details of a virtual machine, the reported Guest OS is Windows 2008, but the actual running Guest OS is Windows 2012.

Environment

VMware vSphere vCenter Server

VMware Cloud Director 10.6

Cause

It's possible that a customer uses a different Guest OS Version (vCenter -> VM Options) than the currently running guest OS version (vCenter -> VM Summary). In such cases, the Guest OS Version is manually configured and can be modified when the VM is powered off. Meanwhile, the running guest OS version is retrieved from the running virtual machine by VMware Tools.

When VM's are deployed from  Cloud Director (VCD), the value of Guest OS for a virtual machine's general information in VCD is set to match the Guest OS Version specified in vCenter. Note that this behavior is observed in late VCD releases (2024 and above), whereas older releases might exhibit different behavior.

Resolution

To access the Guest OS Version option for a virtual machine, navigate to vCenter inventory, select the VM, then go to Edit Settings > VM Options > General Options.

Change a VM in vCenter using the following method:
1. Power off the VM
2. To modify the Guest OS Version of a virtual machine, navigate to vCenter inventory > Edit Settings > VM Options > General Options
3. Change the Guest OS Version to the expected value