Virtual Ethernet Adapter is of type which is not supported

Issue:

When you attempt to migrate or clone a Virtual Machine (VM) you receive the following warning message.

 

Migrate from servername1 to servername2 : Virtual ethernet card ‘Virtual Ethernet Adapter’ is of type which is not supported.  This is not a limitation of the host in general, but of the virtual machine’s configured OS on this host.

 

 

Cause:

There are two possible causes.

 

1)      The Guest Operating System for the VM was accidently changed to an OS type that does not support the Enhanced VMXNET Network Adapter.  For example Windows 2003 Standard is such as OS.

 

2)      You have manually configured the following settings in the VMX file of a Virtual Machine that does not support the Enhanced VMXNET Network Adapater.

a.       ethernet0.virtualDev = “vmxnet”

b.      ethernet0.features = “15”

c.       ethernet0.addressType = “generated”

 

In both cases this issue is not caused by the actual OS that the VM is running.  The issue stems from the allowed configuration for the “Guest Operating System” setting that is configured in the VM Properties as shown in the following screen shot.

 

 

The error is caused because the configured “Guest Operating System” does not support the Enhanced VMXNET network adapter.  However, VMWare does support the Enhanced VMXNET network adapter when used on with any Windows 2003 operating system.  See the More Information section for a link to the KB article.

 

Solution:

Method 1

If you have accidently changed the “Guest Operating System” setting, then you should revert the setting back to an OS setting that supports the Enhanced VMXNET Network Adapter.  For Example, any Windows 2003 Enterprise Edition setting supports the Enhanced VMXNET Network Adapter.

 

Method 2

If you have manually changed settings in the VMX file in an attempt to configure the OS type use the Enhanced VMXNET Network Adapter you can ignore this warning.  The migration or clone of the VM will happen without modifications to the configured NIC.  (i.e. the NIC will not be reset to one supported by the OS).  However, simply setting the OS type to an Windows 2003 Enterprise Edition may be a better solution.

 

More Information:

Enabling enhanced vmxnet adapters for Microsoft Windows Server 2003