Identity of VM Clients

[DKeim]

A physical computer will normally have a serial number.  However, whether it is a conversion of a physical to a VM Client or a newly installed VM Client, I would be interested in knowing if the VM Client can be identify with some number similar to a serial number.

I know they would have PIDs, but am just wondering it there is something else out that VMware would associate with each client

[vijayrana968]

In vSphere, to uniquely identify a virtual machine, you can use the MoRef ID (Managed Object Reference ID) or the instanceUuid of a VM which is available using the vSphere API.

The MoRef ID is a VMware internal identifier that is generated by vSphere when new objects are created in vCenter (e.g. adding ESXi host or creating a VM). This MoRef ID is used by all VMware solutions to reference objects within vCenter. The instanceUuid is a new property that was introduced in the vSphere 4.0 API to provide an easy way to uniquely identify a VM. Previous to this, the BIOS uuid of a VM was being used to identify a VM, but it was not always guaranteed to be unique and hence a vCenter specific UUID was created.

An example of a MoRef ID for a VM would be vm-415 where “vm” identifies the object type and 415 is just a counter. An example of an instanceUuid for a VM would be 501d6aa3-54fc-8b8d-99a2-e448463ead18 which represents a 128bit identifier.

I use RVTools to list all these IDs.

Moreover, VM can be uniqly identified with below IDs :

VC-VM Instance UUID

VM SMBIOS UUID

VM Location ID

VM MoRef

http://www.virtu-al.net/2015/12/04/a-quick-reference-of-vsphere-ids/

[wila]

HI,

There are no Mo-Refs on VMware Fusion.

The VM is identified by its path.

The vmx file has a UUID that will change if you move around the path,  but I'm not sure if that is what you are looking for.

That type of information would only accessible from the host, not from within the VM (again I don't know what you need).

For sure each VM has its own hardware ID, which for example is a part of how Microsoft Windows licenses the VM.

For more info on that see: https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/hardware/ff552325%28v=vs.85%29.aspx

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Wil