Set the guest operating system for VMware

1 Introduction to guest operating system definitions
2 How the multi-cloud platform uses the guest operating system
3 Deploy a Windows 10 64-bit VM on ESXi 6.0+
4 Deploy a Windows 10 Server VM on ESXi 6.0+
5 Deploy a CentOS 64-bit VM on ESX 6.7+
6 Deploy a Windows 2019 64-bit Server on ESXi 7.0+

This document gives a brief explanation of guest operating systems for creating VMs on VMware, for VMware vSphere and ESXi versions 5, 6, and 7.

Introduction to guest operating system definitions

When you create a VM template, to enable VMware hypervisors to correctly configure VMs from the template, specify the guest operating system type and version. In an OVF file that describes a VM template, you can specify the operating system using the CIM standard ID number and a version number. CIM means "common information model" and DMTF maintains this standard. The main website for DMTF's CIM standard is https://www.dmtf.org/standards/cim/. The DMTF issues new versions periodically.

Hypervisors have their own lists of supported operating systems, for example, VMware has the VirtualMachineGuestOsIdentifier, which you can find in the VMware documentation.

How the multi-cloud platform uses the guest operating system

When you upload an OVA file into the Abiquo multi-cloud platform, it will automatically read the operating system type and version from the OVF. Simply select the OVA to upload. Abiquo reads OVA files created with VMware.

Abiquo interprets the CIM numeric codes. But you can also edit the VM template in the catalog and set the guest operating system type and version. The multi-cloud platform also uses the guest operating system type to display an appropriate icon and you can configure the icon files for each OS type.

The details of the operating system are stored in the Abiquo template only, not in the VM definition. This means that if you deploy a VM and then make changes to the template, there will be no changes to your VM. If you do not supply an operating system version, then the multi-cloud platform will use the latest version of the selected operating system.

For a table of the values to use to define the resulting operating systems, see Guest operating system definition for VMware.

Deploy a Windows 10 64-bit VM on ESXi 6.0+

To deploy a virtual machine with a Windows 10 64-bit guest operating system on ESXi 6.0+, set the following values are set in the Operating System Section of the OVF file or the OVA.

  <VirtualSystem ovf:id="vm">
    <Info>A virtual machine</Info>
    <Name>WinDev1810Eval</Name>
    <OperatingSystemSection ovf:id="121" vmw:osType="windows9_64Guest">
      <Info>The kind of installed guest operating system</Info>
    </OperatingSystemSection>

Abiquo uses the ovf:id value to automatically create the following template in the catalog. You can also edit the template to configure the OS in the Abiquo UI or in the API.

...
   <osType>WINDOWS_10_64</osType>
   <osVersion></osVersion>
...

When you deploy a VM from this template in ESXi 6.X+, Abiquo will set the following guest OS, which VMware uses to represent 64-bit Windows 10 guests.

windows9_64Guest

Deploy a Windows 10 Server VM on ESXi 6.0+

To deploy a virtual machine with a Windows 10 Server guest operating system on ESXi 6.X+, set the following values in the OVF file.

This will create the following template definition in Abiquo. You can also set this template definition manually using the API or in the Abiquo database.

The template definition will deploy on ESXi 6.X+ with the following OS type and version, which VMware uses to represent 64-bit Windows 10 server guests.

Deploy a CentOS 64-bit VM on ESX 6.7+

To configure a CentOS 8 64-bit guest operating system, in the OVF file, you can configure the OperatingSystemSection as follows:

This would be converted by Abiquo into the following template definition:

The template definition will deploy on ESXi 6.7+ as the following OS type.

Deploy a Windows 2019 64-bit Server on ESXi 7.0+

To define a VM with a Windows 2019 server 64-bit guest operating system on ESXi 7.0+, when you create or edit a template, select the OS type of WINDOWS and enter 2019 as the version. Abiquo 5.1.2+ will create the following template in the catalog.

When you deploy a VM from this template on vSphere 7.X+, Abiquo 5.1.2+ will set the following guest OS, which VMware uses to represent 64-bit Windows 2019 Server guests.

This was the latest version of the WINDOWS operating system at the time of the release of Abiquo 5.1.2. So Abiquo 5.1.2 will also use this version if you do not specify a version.