State Transition (VM_STATE_ON -> VM_STATE_CREATE_SNAPSHOT) not allowed for this Vm

[seijirou]

Can't figure this one out and Google searching isn't coming up with much.

I have 13 virtual machines in my environment.  They all use the same datastore.  11 of them have no problems, but 2 of them fail with this error when trying to make a snapshot.

I tried restarting vmware services on both the hypervisor and vsphere.  I tried removing and re-adding the VMs from inventory.  None of the VMs directories have snapshot files already. 

[seijirou]

Any further information I could provide to help?

[tolstoy143 · Accepted solution]

This usually means that you have non-quiescable hardware, such as a tape device attached, or you have virtual disk persistency set.  I recomment that you set the latter to the default and try again, as this is the typical cause.  Otherwise, other suspects are raw disk mappings (a fibre-channel LUN directly passed to your VM, which can't be quiesced) or DirectPath IO devices (such as USB or serial PCI cards you pass through tyo the VM).  If this is the case you are probably SOL.

I strongly suspect you enabled an unsupported mode regarding persistence on a virtual disk for your VM.

[seijirou]

Of course, I do have PCI cards passed to these VMs.  Thank you very much for the bump on the head.

[Rajaram2k]

2020-05-22T05:26:01.665Z warning hostd[CAC2B70] [Originator@6876 sub=Vmsvc.vm:/vmfs/volumes/597cd101-dfe0f1f1-0738-1402ec94e018/INFRASYS_POS_Main/INFRASYS_POS_Main.vmx opID=TakeSnapshotFormMediator-add-4114726-ngc:70073014-ff-6d-7a4c user=vpxuser:VSPHERE.LOCAL\Administrator] State Transition (VM_STATE_ON -> VM_STATE_CREATE_SNAPSHOT) not allowed for this Vm

The issue is caused by Pass through