Searched Serverfault (and Google) for this, haven't been able to find an answer… We copied a VM (folder and files) from an ESXi 5.0 server (5.0.0-623860) to an ESXi 4.0 server (4.0.0-261974). (Also, the 5.0 server is licensed, and the 4.0 server is the free version.) Now when we try to start the VM on the 4.0 server, we are getting a popup error "Invalid virtual machine configuration."
Looking at the 4.0 server's logs, it is complaining of "Invalid value '/dev/char/serial/uart0' for configuration key serial0.FileName'. Value was not accepted by rule 'Virtual Serial Port Device backend'." (and the same mssg for uart1 for key serial1.FileName as well.)
Is this a simple version incompatablity between ESXi 5 to 4, which can be fixed by a conversion tool or file edit, or is this something more fundemental?
Thanks for any assistance; I'm not a VMware expert by any stretch of the imagination (more of a network guy…)
Best Answer
It sounds like you've created the VM using machine model 8 which isn't supported on v4 (only up to 7), try exporting it to an .OVA and then reimporting it. Alternatively you could shutdown the mm8 VM, create a new mm7 VM and link the original .vmdk/s to it and try that as the differences are usually only in the .vmx file. Be aware though that mm7 VMs have more capabilities than mm4 ones so you may lose functionality that way.