How-to fix the mismatch between the VM Guest Operating Setting and the Guest Running Operating System

Why does this mismatch happen?

As you are upgrading your OS to a newer version or simply chose the wrong (VM Guest Operating Setting) profile to run a different OS.

From Cloud Portal you might see something like this. In this example all virtual machines are running Windows Server 2016, however Cloud portal is showing Microsoft Windows Server 2008

From the vss-cli you might see something like this. Let's proceed to show the virtual machines filtered by name.

vss-cli --columns moref,name,guest_id,guest_full_name,guest_id_run,guest_full_name_run,version compute vm ls -f name=<NAME_OF_VM>

output:

moref    name                guest_id               guest_full_name                         guest_id_run           guest_full_name_run                              version
-------  ------------------  ---------------------  --------------------------------------  ---------------------  -----------------------------------------------  ---------
vm-ID    1509T-VM-Name       windows8Server64Guest  Microsoft Windows Server 2012 (64-bit)  windows9Server64Guest  Microsoft Windows Server 2016 or later (64-bit)  vmx-09

The importance of this output is the mismatch between the guest_full_name column and guest_full_name_run. What it means is that you are running Windows Server 2016 with a virtual machine settings of Windows Server 2012.

Note that the column version also contains an outdated value. The latest virtual hardware version is vmx-19.

How does this affect your VM?

The virtual machine setting allows presenting the optimal virtual hardware to the guest operating system. In this case, the guest operating system Windows 2016 won’t be presented with the optimal virtual hardware for it to run performant and stable.

How can you fix the mismatch configuration?

Pre-requirements

Latest virtual hardware (vmx-19). If the hardware is not on the latest version, please follow How-to Upgrade a virtual machine to the latest supported hardware version

Access to the ITS Private Cloud Portal or CLI.

VSS-CLI

List the guest_id that matches the full_name OS you are looking for
vss-cli compute os ls -a
output:
1. You can filter the list by a particular name, for example: Microsoft
  output:
Tun off the Virtual Machine
Configure the right OS, replace the Windows2012 profile to Windows 2016 profile
Turn of the Virtual Machine

Cloud Portal UI

In order to update the OS settings, the virtual machine needs to be powered off.

Turn off the virtual machine that you need to update.
1. Click edit button to make changes to the virtual machine.
2. Switch Power Status to off
3. Click Update button
4. Click Confirm button
Click edit button to make changes to the virtual machine.
Edit the OS by typing the name of the OS you want to update with, for this example is Microsoft Windows Server 2016
Click Update button.
Click Confirm button.
Turn on the virtual machine
1. Switch Power Status to on
2. Click Update button
3. Click Confirm button

Virtualization, Servers and Storage