Clone VM Without Quiescing?

[aaronwsmith]

We use PowerCLI 5.1 to automate routine cloning of some VMs.  Since upgrading VMTools to 5.1, some VMs cronically fail to clone with this error when attempting to create a snapshot:

The guest OS has reported an error during quiescing. The error code was: 5 The error message was: 'VssSyncStart' operation failed: IDispatch error #8460 (0x8004230c)

To date, we've only had success recovering from this issue by restarting the VM, which is not ideal.  From researching, we could opt for a crash-consistent clone by avoiding the quiescing of the file system.  I did manually try taking a snapshot of the VM with quiescing enabled, and got the same error above.  When I do not quiesc, the snapshot is successful.

Is it possible to configure a VirtualMachineCloneSpec to avoid quiescing the file system (i.e. create a crash-consistent clone?)  Been searching around in the API and have not come across anything so far that leads me to believe it's possible.

[LucD · Accepted solution]

Provided you are not using ESXi 5.1 U1, did you already try the resolution documented in KB2009065 ?

[aaronwsmith]

Thank you for that KB!  We have ESXi 5.1U1 deployed, but VMTools is 9217 (9.0.1, build 913578), which if I'm correct is from patch ESXi510-201212402-BG.  We have not deployed the tools from 5.1U1: VMTools 9221 (9.0.5, build 1065307.)

I implemented the workaround with success, as we are not yet prepared to roll out VMTools 9221.

Would still be great to know though if there's a way to specify a VM clone spec without quiescing?  Thanks again!

[LucD]

In the cmdlet, nor in the underlying method there is a quiesce option afaik.

Would be interested to learn if that is possible as well.