today we were kind of wondering how accurate the guest OS labeling was in vcenter. from my perspective, i was thinking that the person creating the VM could easily select an incorrect guest OS label and that it wouldn’t automatically change nor affect the functionality of the VM. but then i started wondering if vmware tools would auto-correct the label if it was wrong.

the actual answer is that it’s a little of both. i had a win7 test VM that had the guest OS labeled correctly as windows 7 (32-bit). i wanted to test for ultimate incorrectness so i set the guest OS label to netware and then red hat linux. interestingly enough the VM would no longer boot up properly (in either case). so the guest OS label does have some bearing on what vcenter/ESX expects from the VM.

i then tried a more realistic mistake and changed the label to windows xp (32-bit). the VM would boot up in this state and as soon as the vmware tools process(es) started the label was auto-updated to the correct description. however, once the VM was powered down the label reverted back to the incorrect entry. so ultimately, vmware tools temporarily corrects guest OS labels. and if VMs are powered on and vmware tools is running on them, then i guess you can assume that the guest OS labeling is correct.

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