VMware Hardware Version 13

Each new version of vSphere includes some improvements and new features and many of them will be applied on virtual machines. The improvements and features will be add to “Hardware Version” and you be able to use those, if you use latest “Hardware Version”.

It’s strongly recommended that don’t upgrade your hardware version to latest just when you need to use a specific feature or expand hardware resources that older hardware version doesn’t support that.

Because “Hardware Version” doesn’t have any compatibility with older ESXi and if you have mixed cluster, you can’t use latest hardware version.

Here is an example:

You have a cluster and the cluster contains some ESXi 6.5, 6.0 and 5.5. If you upgrade hardware version to 11, your virtual machine will be hosted by ESXi 6.0, ESXi 6.5 and the machine will not be migrated on ESXi 5.5.

So, keep your hardware version compatible with oldest ESXi in your environment. You can downgrade hardware version but it’s not recommended.

For make sure about hardware version, you can change default version on your cluster anytime.

Let’s review new hardware version, compare it with older versions and compatibility with ESXi:

Feature

ESXi 6.5 and later

ESXi 6.0 and later

ESXi 5.5 and later

ESXi 5.1 and later

ESXi 5.0 and later

ESX/ESXi 4.x and later

ESX/ESXi 3.5 and later

Hardware version

13

11

10

9

8

7

4

Maximum memory (GB)

6128

4080

1011

1011

1011

255

64

Maximum number of logical processors

128

128

64

64

32

8

4

Maximum number of cores (virtual CPUs) per socket

128

128

64

64

32

8

1

Maximum SCSI adapters

4

4

4

4

4

4

4

Bus Logic adapters

Y

Y

Y

Y

Y

Y

Y

LSI Logic adapters

Y

Y

Y

Y

Y

Y

Y

LSI Logic SAS adapters

Y

Y

Y

Y

Y

Y

N

VMware Paravirtual controllers

Y

Y

Y

Y

Y

Y

N

SATA controllers

4

4

4

N

N

N

N

NVMe Controller s

4

N

N

N

N

N

N

Virtual SCSI disk

Y

Y

Y

Y

Y

Y

Y

SCSI passthrough

Y

Y

Y

Y

Y

Y

Y

SCSI hot plug support

Y

Y

Y

Y

Y

Y

Y

IDE nodes

Y

Y

Y

Y

Y

Y

Y

Virtual IDE disk

Y

Y

Y

Y

Y

Y

N

Virtual IDE CD-ROMs

Y

Y

Y

Y

Y

Y

Y

IDE hot plug support

N

N

N

N

N

N

N

Maximum NICs

10

10

10

10

10

10

4

PCNet32

Y

Y

Y

Y

Y

Y

Y

VMXNet

Y

Y

Y

Y

Y

Y

Y

VMXNet2

Y

Y

Y

Y

Y

Y

Y

VMXNet3

Y

Y

Y

Y

Y

Y

N

E1000

Y

Y

Y

Y

Y

Y

Y

E1000e

Y

Y

Y

Y

Y

N

N

USB 1.x and 2.0

Y

Y

Y

Y

Y

Y

N

USB 3.0

Y

Y

Y

Y

Y

N

N

Maximum video memory (MB)

2 GB

2 GB

512

512

128

128

128

SVGA displays

10

10

10

10

10

10

1

SVGA 3D hardware acceleration

Y

Y

Y

Y

Y

N

N

VMCI

Y

Y

Y

Y

Y

Y

N

PCI passthrough

16

16

6

6

6

6

0

PCI Hot plug support

Y

Y

Y

Y

Y

Y

N

Nested HV support

Y

Y

Y

Y

N

N

N

vPMC support

Y

Y

Y

Y

N

N

N

Serial ports

32

32

4

4

4

4

4

Parallel ports

3

3

3

3

3

3

3

Floppy devices

2

2

2

2

2

2

2

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Davoud Teimouri

Professional blogger, vExpert 2015/2016/2017/2018/2019/2020/2021/2022/2023, vExpert NSX, vExpert PRO, vExpert Security, vExpert EUC, VCA, MCITP. This blog is started with simple posts and now, it has large following readers.

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