Problem description
Full VM or disk restore to alternate location fails with error The virtual machine version is not compatible with the version of the host.
Cause
Full VM or disk restore to alternate location fails if the ESX host doesn’t support VM hardware version. The restore may fail with this error when a VM is backed up from a newer version of ESX but restored to an older ESX version. The restore fails during the VM creation phase. For example, VM with hardware version 14 can’t be restored to ESX version 6.5 or 6.0.
Traceback
Follow the instructions in the Logs article to obtain job logs.
Extract the logs and go to Phoenix<YYYYMMDD>_<timestamp>.log file to see the following traceback in the logs.
[2021-06-03 11:05:25,889] [INFO] VM: New VM Name = Test_VMname = 'Test_VM',version = 'vmx-11',[2021-06-03 11:05:25,963] [ERROR] SyncError: The virtual machine version is not compatible with the version of the host 'TestESX'.[2021-06-03 11:05:25,964] [ERROR] Error <class 'pyVmomi.VmomiSupport.vim.fault.VirtualHardwareVersionNotSupported'>:(vim.fault.VirtualHardwareVersionNotSupported)
Resolution
Restore the VM or disk(S) to an ESX server that supports the hardware version of the VM being restored. For ESXi host and hardware version compatibility see Virtual machine hardware versions.