Impact of Upgrading Provider VDC Hardware Version on Existing Virtual Machines in VMware Cloud Director

Products

• VMware Cloud Director

Issue/Introduction

A VMware Cloud Director administrator wants to upgrade the supported hardware version on a Provider Virtual Data Center. For example, increasing the version from 13 to 19.

A common concern is whether this change will impact existing VMs that are running on older hardware versions, potentially causing forced reboots, compatibility issues, or automatic updates.

Environment

• 10.3
• 10.4
• 10.5
• 10.6

Cause

In VMware Cloud Director, the Provider VDC hardware version setting defines the maximum virtual hardware version allowed for VMs within that provider's resource pool. This setting acts as a ceiling for new workloads and determines the capabilities available to newly created or imported virtual machines.

Upgrading the Provider VDC hardware version is a non-retroactive change. It does not negatively impact existing virtual machines that are running on lower hardware versions.

Key Considerations:

• Changing the PVDC hardware level does not trigger an automatic update of the hardware version for existing VMs. Existing VMs will remain on their current version.
• Existing workloads are not forced to reboot and will continue to function normally without downtime during or after the PVDC setting update.
• The update only affects the maximum supported version for future workloads or when an administrator manually chooses to upgrade an existing VM's hardware.
• Before upgrading the PVDC hardware version, ensure that the underlying ESXi hosts in the vCenter infrastructure support the new version. For instance, hardware version 19 requires ESXi 7.0 or later.

Resolution

To update the Provider VDC hardware version, follow these steps in the VMware Cloud Director Service Provider Portal.

1. Log in to the VMware Cloud Director Service Provider Portal as a System Administrator.
2. Navigate to Resources > Cloud Resources > Provider VDCs.
3. Select the target Provider VDC and navigate to General Settings.
4. Edit the Highest supported hardware version and select the desired version (e.g., 19).
5. Save the changes.

Refer to Edit the General Settings of a Provider Virtual Data Center for detailed procedural steps.

For a full mapping of hardware versions to ESXi compatibility, see Virtual machine hardware versions.