The operation is not allowed in the current state. Can't create snapshot.

[anyusernamethan]

Recently upgraded my Dell T620 from 5.5. to 6.0 to 6.7. Now i can't take any snapshots. I tried restarting services.sh. Still can't. Error message:

Create Snapshot

Key

haTask-1-vim.VirtualMachine.createSnapshot-3243076288

Description

Create a new snapshot of this virtual machine

Virtual machine:

DC01

State

Failed - The operation is not allowed in the current state.

[adgate]

Check the thread. It seems to be your case. "The operation is not allowed in the current state." for a single VM on ESXI 6.5

[sk84]

Normally you see this error when the VM has just been turned on and is still starting or when it is shutting down. Or during a vMotion operation. So I would check the task list first. And sometimes a backup software can lead to this error message if the VM is being backed up at this moment.

If you can't find a running task and there is no backup running, you can first try moving the VM to another host using vMotion or try restarting the VM.

If that doesn't help, I would either restart the vCenter Server or deregister (but don't delete!) the VM and then re-register it. Depending on the impact for you and your infrastructure.

[anyusernamethan]

I appreciate the response. I just rebooted the entire hyper-visor to no avail. Had properly shut down and powered up VMs. Any ideas?

[sk84]

Is it possible to do a vMotion to another host? Have you tried restarting the vCenter? And as last resort: Shutdown the VM, unregister it ("Remove from inventory") and re-register the VM again.

[anyusernamethan]

Just a single server so no way to vMotion and using vSphere, not vCenter. Small place. Going to re-register it now. Will let you know. Thanks!

[anyusernamethan]

De-registered and registered the VM. Powered on and attempted a snapshot. Unfortunately am still receiving the same error:

Create Snapshot

Key

haTask-6-vim.VirtualMachine.createSnapshot-861

Description

Create a new snapshot of this virtual machine

Virtual machine:

DC01

State

Failed - The operation is not allowed in the current state.

Errors

[sk84]

Oh, okay. I assumed that it was a vCenter environment.

So you already restarted the VM and rebooted the ESXi host. Furthermore, you removed the VM from the inventory and added it again. And the error still occurs.

Does it have enough free space on the datastore to take the snapshot? How do you create the snapshot? Which options have you activated (Snapshot the virtual machine's memory, Quiesce guest file system)? Have you configured anything special in the VM (PCI or USB pass-through, SCSI bus sharing or something like that)?

[anyusernamethan]

Which options have you activated (Snapshot the virtual machine's memory, Quiesce guest file system)?

Using the webclient I've attempted the snapshot with all the different options, with and without snapshotting mem and quiesceing the guest file system.. same error.

My datastore's used capacity is at 68%, with 712GB free.

Have you configured anything special in the VM (PCI or USB pass-through, SCSI bus sharing or something like that)?

Upon checking:

-Going into the VM there's a warning: "The portgroup for Network adapter 2, VM Network, could not be found. It has been assigned to Server Network."

-

-I've deleted the 2nd network adapter since both were connected to the same virtual switch. After this change i still could not snapshot (with and without snapshotting mem)

-I don't see any other oddities or specific settings such as described in the question

By the way, for clarification: there's another active VM on this host that i CAN snapshot with no issue.

[hw9664]

Hi

​Did you ever get your snapshot failing issue resolved? I am having what appears to be the exact same problem and I have tried all the suggestions from restarting the VM and ESXi host to unregistering the VM and re-registering it. I dont know what else to try. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

​Thanks

​Paul

[gbanta001]

I too am having the same issue.  I was testing Veeam backup and replication and yesterday all worked fine.  Late lastnight I did add a pci(video card) to my vm so that plex would work better and now the backups wont run.  Clearly Veeam is using vmware snapshots.  Will snapshots not work if you are passing through hardware?

[daphnissov]

Yes, if you're passing through PCI devices then you can't snapshot a VM.

[gbanta001]

Well thank you for this clarification.  I am currently testing by removing the video card.  If this is the case this is BS.  I understand they can't copy the pci devices, but com'on man they should still be able to back them up.

[daphnissov]

Sorry, not how it works!

[gbanta001]

You have resolved my issue or a least shown me the problem in my case.  But how do vm's with pass-through devices get backed up?  Does Veeam or other tools not have a way?  Is this an unsupported setup? 

[daphnissov]

Veeam has an in-guest agent you can use to back up at either a volume or file level. For situations where you absolutely must have physical pass-through devices (like RDMs), this is really the only way you can go about it. For reasons like this, you really need to evaluate why you're using such devices in the first place rather than just using a dedicated physical machine.

[gbanta001]

Thank you for those thoughts.  In this systems case, I added the video card to keep from using CPU during Plex streams.  This way I could save resources for the other critical functions this server does like DNS, AD, DC and so on.  But like you said this may have just limited me to volume backups, but I really wanted to be able to get a full system(VM) backup for quicker recovery.  This however is only a problem in my environment, I will be able to do this at remove locations because they are not using pass-through.

[Exaspray]

Just had the same issues. I could not backup, nor do a simple snapshot from the VCenter, even without snapshoting the memory.

What I did :

- Uninstall VMWare tools on the VM

- Tried to reinstall the VMWare tools from the VCenter, but it failed

- Download a previous version of VMWare tools on VMWare website (VMware-Tools-core-10.2.5-8068406)

- Manually install the VMWare tools in mounting the ISO file directly on the guest OS (Windows), and execute the setup file

- After this Tools installation, I could do snapshots again

- Then I upgraded from the VCenter to the latest version of the Tools => still able to do snapshots

- Try a backup from my backup software (Nakivo) : successful :-))