After conversion, most applications function correctly on the VMware virtual machine because their configuration and data files have the same location as on the source virtual machine. However, applications might not work if they depend on specific characteristics of the underlying hardware, such as the serial number or the device manufacturer.

Several hardware changes might occur after you migrate a virtual machine.

Table 1. Hardware Changes After Virtual Machine Migration
Hardware Behavior
CPU model and serial numbers Might change after migration. They correspond to the physical computer hosting the VMware virtual machine.
Ethernet adapters Might change for AMD PCNet or VMXnet and get different MAC addresses. The IP address of each interface must be individually reconfigured.
USB adapters Might be updated during the cloning process.
Graphics cards Might change after migration (VMware SVGA card).
Disks and partitions The number of disks and partitions might change during the cloning process. Each disk device might have a different model and different manufacturer strings.
Primary disk controllers Might differ from the source machine.

Applications that depend on devices that are not available within a virtual machine might not work after you migrate the virtual machine.