Have VMWare ESXi VM hardware look like the underlying hardware

Had an issue today where I couldn’t use the IBM OEM Windows 2012R2 media that IBM provided together with our new xServer because the media running in the ESXi VM didn’t see the underlying IBM hardware. The solution was to set an ESXi option on the VM called SMBIOS.reflectHost = “TRUE” as described in this post (Unable to install Microsoft Windows Server 2012 on VMware ESXi host – IBM System x). That made the VM represent the underlying hardware.

Published by

lekkim

Positive, competent, out-spoken, frank and customer focused architect and developer with a strong foundation in web, cloud and product development. I'm a strong advocate for API first and cloud based solutions and development. I have a knack for being able to communicate and present technically complicated matters in conference, customer and training settings. I've previously acted as team member and leader in a product organisation.