vm machine could not power on

[khalidsayed]

dear experts

I hope you and your loved ones are all healthy.

We have VM that hardware version is 14 and running in esxi 6.7. As per project requirement we need to migrate the VM to esxi 6.5 , I  downgraded hardware version from 14 to 10  by editing  .vmx file and migrate the vm to ESXI 6.5 but after editing the machine not power on , when power the machine  i have below error

Task name Power On virtual machine

Target test2020

Status Module 'SecureBoot' power on failed.

can  any one advise please.

Thanks in advance.

[daphnissov]

The proper way to downgrade VM hardware is to create a new VM at the needed level and attach the existing hard disk. Hand editing the VMX is not a good idea.

[khalidsayed]

if we do that we can export the vm later  with new hardware version to use it in another vcenter ?

[CRad14]

Use the VMware Converter to change the VM Hardware and migrate it to a new destination.

VMware Knowledge Base

https://www.vmware.com/products/converter.html

[Darius Davis]

Make sure you turn off UEFI Secure Boot in that VM's settings before downgrading the virtual hardware.  It will not be automatically disabled during a virtual hardware downgrade, and the error you are seeing occurs because of the attempt to power on a VM configured for Secure Boot on a virtual hardware version that can not support Secure Boot.

--

Darius

[NathanosBlightc]

As other experts said you can create a new VM and attach the existing VMDK (virtual disks) to this new one. So no need to worry about when or where you want to attach this new VM. You can add the VMDK files later to a new VM in a new vCenter/ESXi hosts (Just consider VM Hardware version compatibility) because you can detach/attach the virtual disks to the current or new VM whenever you want.

About the Secure Boot, it's one of the UEFI features. When you edit the *.vmx (config file) of VM, if it's not a BIOS you can find the EFI and change or remove the raw (I think it started like firmware="efi")