Expose minimum hardware version on the VSphereVM spec

[srm09]

/kind feature

Describe the solution you'd like
Similar to the hardware version field on the infrastructure.cluster.x-k8s.io VSphereVM API types, we'd like to introduce a similar field on the API types under the vmware.infrastructure.cluster.x-k8s.io API group as well.

Anything else you would like to add:
With some recent updates to the underlying VMOperator provisioner used in vCenter Workload Management, the hardware version of the VirtualMachine now gets inferred from the VMClass instead of being calculated from the hardware version set in the OVA. If the hardware version is not set on the VMClass, then it defaults to the vCenter datacenter/cluster/host compatibility version defaults.
Since hardware version dictates the hardware compatibility of VMs, CAPV users should have the ability to be able to prescribe the minimum hardware version that a VM should adhere to.

This would require pulling in the updated VMOp APIs which expose setting this field on the Spec.

[sbueringer]

Sounds good!

Wait, does this mean we have to start using v1alpha2?

[chrischdi]

I think its not even part of v1alpha2. I was only able to find it for the VirtualMachineImage object in v1alpha2:

https://github.com/vmware-tanzu/vm-operator/blob/main/api/v1alpha1/virtualmachineimage_types.go#L103

[srm09]

/retitle Expose minimum hardware version on the VSphereVM spec

[srm09]

VM-operator vmware-tanzu/vm-operator#205 exposes a new field to set the minimum h/w version on the VirtualMachine Spec. This issue is to track the uptake of this field in the VSphereVM spec in the vmware.infra.cluster.x-k8s.io API group.

[srm09]

/priority important-soon

[srm09]

/assign