A hardware profile is a collection of hardware settings that can be imported into a new virtual machine or a new virtual machine template. By using hardware profiles, you can ensure consistent hardware settings in virtual machines. In addition to memory and CPU configurations, a hardware profile can specify virtual network adapters DVDs, and floppy disk drives.

After specifying a hardware profile for a virtual machine, you can change the settings that were imported. The changes do not affect the hardware profile. No association is maintained with the hardware profile after the virtual machine is created.

You can create a hardware profile by using the New hardware profile action in Library view, or you can save a new hardware profile based on the hardware configuration of a virtual machine or a template.

Hardware profiles are managed in Library view.

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