Virtual Hardware Version 15

Just a quick heads up about Virtual Hardware Version 15 which released as part of vSphere 6.7 Update 2.

Usually new virtual hardware versions only come about with a full major release of vSphere but this is the first time, as far as I can remember, that a new virtual hardware version has been introduced as part of an update release.

The important thing to note about virtual hardware versions is that they do not run on earlier versions of ESXi than the version they first released with.

Virtual hardware version 15 was released with ESXi 6.7 U2, therefore it will not run on any earlier version of ESXi, including ESXi 6.7 GA or 6.7 U1.

Because it’s not common for a new virtual hardware version to release as an update, I would exercise some caution before you start creating vHW15 VMs or upgrading existing VMs to vHW15.

Remember, vHW15 won’t run on anything earlier than ESXi 6.7 U2 so unless you have updated all ESXi hosts, at least within a cluster, you could run the risk that vHW15 VMs are restricted to only the hosts currently running ESXi 6.7 U2 which might reduce their mobility and availability potential while the cluster is comprised of mixed patch levels.

vHW15 is also not currently compatible with VMware Cloud on AWS.

The only difference between vHW15 and vHW14 is the number of vCPU a VM can supported. vHW15 increases this to 256 vCPU compared to vHW14 128 vCPU.

When creating new VMs using the vSphere Client, vHW14 will still be the default version in vSphere 6.7 U2.

For more on vHW versions and their features check out:

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