The hardware version defines the virtual hardware available to the VM that corresponds to the physical hardware available on the host. vSphere 6.5 introduces hardware version 13 and supports VMs created with previous hardware versions. Each hardware version supports at least five major or minor vSphere releases. By default, the compatibility of the VM is given by the host version on which the VM is created, or by the inventory object on which the default VM compatibility is set.

A question you might have is—“what hardware version should I use?”. The hardware version to use depends on what version of ESXi your environment uses. If you have multiple hosts with different versions, you should choose the correct hardware version to match the lowest version host used in the infrastructure (for example, hardware version 13 is not supported by ESXi 5.5 or 6.0).

However, a lower version will have a reduced functionality and a VM with a higher hardware version configured won't be supported by a VMware product with a lower version. If your environment runs vSphere 6.5, the suggestion is to configure the running VM with the highest hardware version available to take the benefit of the latest features.

Different VM versions can be created, edited, and run on a host if the host supports that version. Actions on a host are limited or the VM has no access to the host if the VM's configured hardware version is greater than the version supported by the host.

VM hardware versions can be summarized in the table as:

The chosen version determines not only the hardware available to the VM but also the supported OS. That is, during the deployment of the VM, the OS supported depends on the hardware version configured.