Troubleshooting ESXi 5.0 and 5.5 snapshots issues - Tips

Luciano PatrãoICT Senior Infraestructure  Engineer  
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vExpert vSAN, NSX, Cloud Provider, Veeam Vanguard, Virtual Backups, and Storage design, and an active blogger.
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There are some issues that we can encounter with some VMs regarding snapshots and some VM operations..

These issues can appear when you upgrade VMs HW to v9 or v10, when you migrate hosts/VMs to a new vCenter(5.0 or 5.5) when VMs have snapshots created.

Try these tips to see if they resolves your issues when you encounter the following...

1st problem:

When you try to revert to any snapshots we get "The operation is not supported on the object".
This one is easy to fixed, just remove the VM from the inventory and add again to vCenter. That will fix the problem.

We may use the vim-cmd vmsvc/reload vmid option here(second option on this article)

2nd problem:

When you try to use any of the Snapshots options('Take Snapshot', 'Snapshot Manager' and 'Revert to current Snapshot') Virtual machine operations are grayed out. There is virtual machine tasks running in the background(maybe any previous task hanging).

So first you need to check which tasks are running on the VM.

Just connect to your host(ssh) and list all VMs and their vmid.

Run:

vim-cmd vmsvc/getallvms

You will get all VMs and vmid associated. After you get your VM vmid Run:

vim-cmd vmsvc/get.tasklist vmid

The output is similar to:

(ManagedObjectReference) [
'vim.Task:haTask-112-vim.VirtualMachine.createSnapshot-3887']


If there is no task running on that virtual machine, you see output:

(ManagedObjectReference) []

But even you don't see any tasks running, it has a process running (or hanging). So you should reload the vmx file(that will create a new Inventory ID (Vmid) and this should be enough to fix this issue.

Run:

vim-cmd vmsvc/reload vmid

Now the Virtual Machine should be ok and you should have all options available again.

More information here about this commands:

http://kb.vmware.com/kb/1013003
http://kb.vmware.com/kb/2048748

I have tested the vim-cmd vmsvc/reload on the first issue, and it works for me...

This is the first of "TIP Articles" that I plan to write when I have some time. So, please vote "Helpful" on this Article. And I encourage your comments and feedback.
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Luciano PatrãoICT Senior Infraestructure  Engineer  
CERTIFIED EXPERT
vExpert vSAN, NSX, Cloud Provider, Veeam Vanguard, Virtual Backups, and Storage design, and an active blogger.

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