VI Client Snapshot Buttons Disabled

[CIS1Q]

Help, please.

I have created twelve Virtual Machines on our ESX 3.5 Server. I want to make snapshots of each of them so that I can revert to the snapshot at a later date. On six of the Virtual Machines, the Snapshot Buttons are Enabled in VI Client and I have managed to create snapshots - on the other six Virtual Machines, the Snapshot Buttons are Disabled (greyed out) so I cannot create snapshots. There is plenty of capacity left on the VMFS volumes but, regardless of that, I deleted all the snapshots that I had created and checked the status of the Snapshot Buttons. The same VMs have the Snapshot Buttons enabled as before and, similarly, the same VMs have the Snapshot Buttons disabled. I'm confused because I created all VMs in exactly the same way - the only difference are the vmdks that had been imported. The ones that work are vmdks created via P2V whereas the ones that do not a vmdks that were imported from VMs that had been created under VMware GSX Server using vmfstools -i command to import from /vmimages to /vmfs/volumes/disk1

Can anyone throw any light on this problem, please?

What causes Snapshot Buttons to be disabled for specific VMs?

Can I alter the state of the Snapshot Buttons for specific VMs?

Many thanks

Joe.

[dmn0211]

Can you do a cold snapshot this VM?

If not may want to check vmtools, make sure they are up to date.

Could check the vmx for snapshot.disabled.

Use the vmware-cmd to create a test snapshot.

"Snapshots can be managed using the VI Client by connecting either directly to an ESX server or by connecting to VirtualCenter. If you choose to use the command line interface (CLI) instead, the syntax for creating snapshots is "vmware-cmd createsnapshot ", i.e. "vmware-cmd myvm1.vmx createsnapshot snap1 'before upgrade' 1 1". The options for quiesce and memory are either 1 for yes or 0 for no. Choosing 1 will quiesce file system writes before taking the snapshot. Choosing 1 for memory will snapshot the VM's memory state. If you create multiple snapshots, the previous snapshots become read-only once the new snapshot is created." from Eric Siebert

Check this thread for additional steps.

[CIS1Q]

Well, thanks to guidance to Persistent, Independant Disks by filvirt; I have now resolved the issue.

Having tried a number of different approaches - deleting the VMs exporting the vmdks to VMware Windows and making sure that I could create snapshots there, then importing the vmdks back with no luck, etc. - I finally hit on the solution.

I reimported the original vmdks and created VMs using them. As before, the snapshot icons were not usable. However, from the VMware Infrastructure Client; I highlighted one of the VMs, clicked on Inventory ==> Virtual Machine ==> Upgrade Virtual Hardware. When that completed, the snapshot icons were usable. When I went back to Inventory ==> Virtual Machine, the Upgrade Virtual Hardware was not available. I did the same on with the other five VMs and all is OK. I hadn't spotted Upgrade Virtual Hardware before and, obviously, hadn't seen it on any of the other VMs.

I have updated this in order to mark it as answered and to make this information available to anyone else who might experience the same problem.

Many thanks

Joe.

[Texiwill]

Hello,

Thread locked, refer to to continue this discussion.

Best regards,

Edward L. Haletky

VMware Communities User Moderator

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Author of the book 'VMWare ESX Server in the Enterprise: Planning and Securing Virtualization Servers', Copyright 2008 Pearson Education.

CIO Virtualization Blog: http://www.cio.com/blog/index/topic/168354

As well as the Virtualization Wiki at http://www.astroarch.com/wiki/index.php/Virtualization