This post is  to share you with the tip to upgrade your virtual machine VM hardware version without losing the Network adapter static IP settings. I believe we are always almost in the work of doing P2v migration, v2v migration and Upgradation of ESX/ ESXi host to newer version  Upgrade from vSphere 5.0 to vSphere 5.1. May be sooner will be upgrade from vSphere 5.1 to vSphere 5.5. All the above mentioned tasks will provide us with the option of Virtual Machine VM hardware version to latest to utilize the new features available as part of the newer vSphere releases..

Mostly i have seen the problem that after upgrading the VM hardware version , we will lose network adapter IP settings and we have to manually reconfigure the network adapter settings including Static IP Address, DNS information. This  issue may occur because Virtual network card configured with the virtual machine is moved to a different position on the virtual PCI bus as part of VM hardware upgrade. The guest operating system treats this movement of existing virtual network card as new hardware device.

VMUpgradeHelper helps us to perform the VM upgrade version version to latest without losing the Network adapter settings .

VMUpgradeHelper service allows you to save the current virtual network adapter configuration to the registry  and also allows you to restore the previously saved network adapter configuration by overwriting the current configuration of Virtual network adapter.

VMUpgradeHelper saves and restores the following information’s:

1.IPv4/IPv6 network address, Subnet masks,default gateway and cost metrics

2.DHCP state

3.DNS domain name, DNS search order list and Register this connection’s address in DNS settings

NOTE: It will not take backup of Wins and NETBIOS settings.

Follow the below procedures to upgrade VM hardware version without losing network adapter settings

1. Login to the Virtual Machine with administrative credentials

2. Open the Command prompt and browse towards the installation location of VMware tools
(C:\Program Files\VMware\VMware Tools)

3.Save the network adapter configuration using one of the below command. VMUpgradeHeler tool will have .bat extension in the latest version of VMware tools and usage of the command which is same as .exe version.

VMUpgradeHelper.exe /s
VMUpgradeHelper.bat /s

The above command saves the network configuration into registry

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\VMware, Inc.\VMware Tools\VMUpgradeHelper\Adapters\

4. Power off the Virtual Machine and Upgrade the VM hardware version. (Ensure that you have upgraded VMware tools to latest version before upgrading VM hardware version)

5,Power on the Virtual Machine and Login back with administrative credentials

6. Open the Command prompt and browse towards the installation location of VMware tools
(C:\Program Files\VMware\VMware Tools)

7.Execute the below command to restore the virtual machine network configuration

VMUpgradeHelper.exe /r
VMUpgradeHelper.bat /r

8,Verify the network settings are restore back and log off the virtual machine.

I hope this is informative for you. Thanks for reading !!!