VM MinHardwareVersion

[akutz]

This patch adds support for specifying a VM's mininum hardware version in order to enable more control over a VM's hardware version by the DevOps persona. This also enables upgrading brownfield VMs to a more recent hardware version in order to support features like PVCs and Dynamic Direct Path I/O devices.

[sreyasn]

Change looks good to me. We'll need to decide on what takes precedence when the VM Class Config Spec's hw version and the VM Spec's hw version are set. VM Spec overrides Class?.

[akutz]

Change looks good to me. We'll need to decide on what takes precedence when the VM Class Config Spec's hw version and the VM Spec's hw version are set. VM Spec overrides Class?.

I think we already made that decision when we said the hardware from the class replaces the hardware from the OVF

I misread the above point. The VirtualMachineSpec.MinHardwareVersion always has final say, whether the original value is derived from the OVF or eventually VM Class.

Thanks for the approvals -- I'm going to wait to merge this until we have go-ahead for Shruthi to execute on the implementation. We don't want to add the field until we know we can resource the work to make it available in the next release.