Difficulting Editing Network Card on vSphere 5.5

I have to confess, I've been "kickin' it old school" and haven't embraced some of the new ways of doing things with my VMware ESXi systems.

I stayed at version 5.0 on vCenter and ESX for awhile.  News of the challenges of the upgrade to 5.1 and the Single Sign On implementation gave me pause and I delayed.

So much so that I skipped 5.1 altogether and upgraded to 5.5 approximately 1 year ago.  (I haven't yet dipped my toe into 6.0.  We have other large scale upgrades and initiatives that haven't allowed me the time to do so.  I hope to investigate it in the coming months.)

One of the other new things I've been avoiding?  The vCenter Web Client.  I was used to being proficient and moving quickly through the vSphere fat client.  Certain features weren't there (hello, Update Manager), and so many things were in different places.

Related to that, I haven't taken my Virtual Machine Hardware versions above 8, so they could all be edited in the fat client.

Okay, with that background out of the way, this weekend I performed a sizeable P2V migration of a SQL server.  And, when the time came, I decided to abandon some of my older ways.  I built the new system as Virtual Machine Hardware version 10, current to my 5.5 infrastructure.

So, after the initial P2V work was done (by running vSphere Converter Standalone), I was working with my new virtual server (uninstalling hardware drivers as appropriate).  I noticed I had an Intel E1000 network adapter.  My standard is to use the VMXNET 3 adapter.  This allows my virtual systems to communicate amongst themselves at 10Gbps.

OK well this is easy enough to fix.  (Or is it?)  I powered down the virtual server for good measure, and attempted to Edit Settings.

Well, that was silly of me.  I knew that was coming.  OK time to sign into the vCenter Web Client to make the changes.

But wait!  Even with the VM powered off, I could not edit the adapter type--it was grayed out and unchangable.  What was going on?  I began to panic.

I attempted to add a second Network Adapter.  Again, I wound up with an E1000 I could not edit.  My panic level rose.

The trick, and how to accomplish this task, is to DELETE ALL NETWORK ADAPTERS.  Once there are none on the system, and you add one--then you can edit the type.  At that point, I selected my desired VMXNET 3 and was on my way.