Edit Hard Disk Serial Number with VMware

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I'm virtualizing a Rockwell AssetCentre Server and I'm looking at Disaster Recovery scenarios. This server contains a lot of other Rockwell Software like RSLinx, Logix 5000, Logix 500, and more…

Software activations for Rockwell work in a very strict manner, so much so that I'm concerned about whether its going to be viable to restore the AssetCentre server Virtual Machine to a different host in the event of a system failure.

The software activations are locked to the virtual machine using the serial number of the hard drive. You can also choose to lock it to the MAC address of the virtual machine. Are either of these two things something that can be customized and edited using VMWare? Will they automatically change if I host the virtual machine using a different Virtual Server?

I've looked inside the .vmx files (currently using a mix of VMWare Workstation 7 and VMware ESXi 4.1) and I didn't see anything in either of the files that looked like a MAC addresss or a Hard Disk serial number.

Best Answer

The UUID of the disk is in the .vmdk file. For example:

# The Disk Data Base 
#DDB

ddb.toolsVersion = "8327"
ddb.adapterType = "lsilogic"
ddb.geometry.sectors = "63"
ddb.geometry.heads = "255"
ddb.geometry.cylinders = "2610"
ddb.uuid = "60 00 C2 9f e4 06 d9 4c-13 9a d8 50 77 bb 73 36"
ddb.longContentID = "72d1cd8a4fb3119ca80f3870ee90c1b0"
ddb.virtualHWVersion = "7"

The MAC address can be edited under 'Advanced properties' of your network adapter. It should also be in the .vmx file. I found this is mine:

ethernet0.generatedAddress = "00:0c:29:f3:72:cc"

It's possible that it's only saved there once you edit it though.

If you move your VM to another location VMWare usually asks you if you moved or copied the VM when you start it. If you say you moved it then all ID's stay the same. If you say you copied it then VMWare will change the ID's to prevent conflicts.

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