VMWare ESXi (VSphere) - How to Downgrade VM Hardware (example 7U3 to 6.7)

Upgrading the hardware on a VM is easy just rigth click on the mouse and chose "Upgrade VM Compatibility".

The inverse, which downgrading VM Hardware, there is no official way of doing it.

To downgrade from ESXI 7U3 to 6.7 I did it like this (should work for other versions):

• Enable SSH on ESXI7

• WinSCP to ESXI7

• Clone the .vmx to save it before changing it

• Change original .vmx to ESXI 6.7 (hardware version 14):

            virtualHW.version = "14"

            You can find other harware versions at:

            https://knowledge.broadcom.com/external/article?legacyId=1003746

                VMware products and their virtual hardware version

• Unregister the VM

• Register VM using the modified .vmx



Ansible - Setup on Linux ( +cisco devices )

 

Ansible Installation

On the ubuntu shell run:

sudo apt update
sudo apt upgrade -y

 

# PYTHON

sudo apt-get install python3

sudo apt install python3-pip

 

# ANSIBLE

sudo apt install -y software-properties-common

sudo apt install -y ansible

 

# ANSIBLE COMMON MODULES / LIBRARIES (OPTIONAL)

ansible-galaxy collection install cisco.ios

sudo apt-get install python3-dnspython

sudo pip install ansible-pylibssh

sudo pip install pexpect

sudo pip install paramiko

sudo apt-get install sshpass

SSH Host Key Checking

If you want to avoid issues on connecting via SSH because the the keys are not added, go to:  

sudo nano /etc/ansible/ansible.cfg

and uncoment the "host_key_checking" line:

[defaults]
host_key_checking = False

Verification

WSL

Win+r ubuntu

 

PYTHON

python3

 

ANSIBLE

ansible-playbook --version