Compatibility between ESXi versions

[ssandoz]

Dear,

In my primary datacenter, we have ESXi hosts in version 6.7.0.
I use replication jobs to copy VMs to a secondary datacenter where ESXi hosts are also in version 6.7.0.

For some days, one of the ESXi hosts located in the primary datacenter was upgraded to version 7.0.3.
Now the replication fails for the VMs hosted on the upgraded ESXi hosts with the following message:
VM hardware version 19 is not supported by destination host (version 6.7.3).

I can upgrade ESXi hosts located in the secondary datacenter to version 7.0.3.
But then, what will happen for VMs still hosted on ESXi hosts in version 6.7.0?
In other words, is compatibility supported by replication jobs from ESXi 6.7.0 to ESXi 7.0.3?

Thanks for your feedback!

[Mildur]

Hi

You can replicate vms from a 6.7.0 host to a 7.0.3 Host. See this table, which vm hardware version can run on which ESXI Version:
https://kb.vmware.com/s/article/2007240

But you can't replicate a vm with a hardware version, which was introduced in esxi 7, to the esxi 6.7 host.
That's the reason, why the replica is failing.

[Andreas Neufert]

Replication can happenin both ways, as long as all hosts support the same VMware VM Hardware version.
So you can recreate the VM and attach the disks with a VM hardware version that your lowest ESXi version support and replication will work between hosts.