Edit Hard Disk Serial Number with VMware

Question

I'm virtualizing a Rockwell AssetCentre Server and I'm looking at Disaster Recovery scenarios. This server contains a lot of other Rockwell Software like RSLinx, Logix 5000, Logix 500, and more...

Software activations for Rockwell work in a very strict manner, so much so that I'm concerned about whether its going to be viable to restore the AssetCentre server Virtual Machine to a different host in the event of a system failure.

The software activations are locked to the virtual machine using the serial number of the hard drive. You can also choose to lock it to the MAC address of the virtual machine. Are either of these two things something that can be customized and edited using VMWare? Will they automatically change if I host the virtual machine using a different Virtual Server?

I've looked inside the .vmx files (currently using a mix of VMWare Workstation 7 and VMware ESXi 4.1) and I didn't see anything in either of the files that looked like a MAC addresss or a Hard Disk serial number.

Answer 1

The UUID of the disk is in the .vmdk file. For example:

# The Disk Data Base 
#DDB

ddb.toolsVersion = "8327"
ddb.adapterType = "lsilogic"
ddb.geometry.sectors = "63"
ddb.geometry.heads = "255"
ddb.geometry.cylinders = "2610"
ddb.uuid = "60 00 C2 9f e4 06 d9 4c-13 9a d8 50 77 bb 73 36"
ddb.longContentID = "72d1cd8a4fb3119ca80f3870ee90c1b0"
ddb.virtualHWVersion = "7"

The MAC address can be edited under 'Advanced properties' of your network adapter. It should also be in the .vmx file. I found this is mine:

ethernet0.generatedAddress = "00:0c:29:f3:72:cc"

It's possible that it's only saved there once you edit it though.

If you move your VM to another location VMWare usually asks you if you moved or copied the VM when you start it. If you say you moved it then all ID's stay the same. If you say you copied it then VMWare will change the ID's to prevent conflicts.

Answer 2

Can you clarify what you mean by the serial number of the disk ? How would you normally read it ?

MAC addresses for the ethernet adaptors are stored in the .vmx file as

ethernet0.generatedAddress = "00:0c:39:5b:b5:e0"

Answer 3

So I found out that VMware changes Hard Disk serial number (8 character Alpha-Numeric code somehow bound to a Hard Drive or Volume) when you make a clone, and I haven't found a way to manually change it back. So... using the "DISK_SERIAL_NUM" for the Host ID is a bad idea for Rockwell products running on VMware (even though they will still recommend it).

In FactoryTalk Activation Manager, if you click "Get New Activations" and then click the [...] button under "Host ID Information" it will show you MAC Address and the "DISK_SERIAL_NUM" and ask you to choose a Host ID to bind your activation's.

Since the MAC Address is the only thing I know of that you can manually configure in ESXi on a virtual machine, we reworked our activation's and now they're all bound to the MAC address of the primary network adapter.

Been running...
- AssetCentre
- RSLogix 500 (make sure you get the activation Node-Locked)
- RSLogix 5000
- RSLinx Classic
...with no issues since reworking the activation's.