'VMWare Virtual Platform' changed to 'VMWare 7,1'

One of my most popular posts is around VMWare Tools. WIth that in mind, I do lots and lots of image testing using VMs .Even sharing about a retired "image mule" design from years ago. VMWare platform mostly. Was doing some testing and was scratching my head on why the VMWare Drivers injection step was not working all of a sudden.

Doing imaging 101, the smsts.log showed the step was skipped as the condition was false. Go check the task seuquence and it is looking of OSDComputerModel=VMWare Virtual Platform. This step has worked for years and years. So back on the VM, I open a quick CMD and do a 'wmic csproduct get name' and it returned 'VMWare 7,1'. Turns out in VMWare Workstation 15 this was changed.

The steps looks for 'VMware Virtual Platform' as the model via OSDComputerModel variable. I dont use WMI queries on each step. I have it run as part of the tech interview screen and spits all that stuff like make, model, memory, storage, etc into variables that I use as conditions on the steps. Runs faster then using WMI on every driver step for example. Imagine my surprise while in Workstation 15 this came back as 'VMWare 7,1'.

I'm guessing this will also hit ESXi in the next version based on this VMWare KB article around Virtual Hardware 16.

If you're looking for model in ConfigMgr, MDT, etc, this will bite you pretty soon no matter how you look for it.

Update
Appears to be Workstation with UEFI. I created a Workstation 14 compatible VM in 15 and it was also 'VMWare 7,1'. Did a 12 and it was 'VMWare 7,1' also. Changed from UEFI to BIOS and its back at 'VMware Virtual Platform'. I was using UEFI in Workstation 14 so think this is related to Workstation 15 only. If I get time I will put 14 back on and try it. I'll also check on my 6.7 Update 1 ESXi host at home to see what it returns for VMs to compare.


-Kevin