Cant change vm settings while powered on

[dprivateb]

Hi All

Anyone know why my cpu has this exclamation mark? some of my vm's have this and some don't, all configured the same way. i cant make any changes while the vm is powered on. thanks for your help

[NicolasAlauzet]

Hi.

About the exclamation mark, did you check what's the message? If the changes you want to do are CPU related while the VM is ON, first you need to enable CPU hot add (with the VM off) then you will be able add more CPU while the vm is running.

[nachogonzalez]

By default, VM works that way. You shouldn't be able to change memory or remove disks either.
You can enable CPU or Memory hot add to by pass that behavior.

[IRIX201110141]

Keep in mind that when CPU HotAdd is enabled for a VM you as a SysAdmin have to take care of NUMA.  Also CPU HotAdd need a Enterprise Plus? license as well as a supportet GuestOS.

Regards,
Joerg

[dprivateb]

that's the problem. there is no message anywhere. im just showing the expanded cpu section because that's where the exclamation point is. i can try making changes to most sections, like network, cd rom, add hardware, but.... the OK button is greyed out so i cant save any changes.

[dprivateb]

the OK button is greyed out so i cant save changes. this pic in my original post is of the expanded CPU section. there are no messages anywhere i can find.

[Lalegre]

Hey,

I think you are not reading what NicolasAlauzet​ mentioned on top. To modify vCPU and RAM while the VM is powered-on you need to have the Hot Add capability enabled and as we can see on your screenshot, the checkbox is not checked.

[dprivateb]

thanks but I'm not actually making any changes at the point of these screen shots. this is the state of the settings when i open it up.

[IRIX201110141]

You have to click that checkbox FIRST and the VM have to be OFF to enable this feature.

But this answered your first question about the red explanation mark on the upper left.

Regards,
Joerg

[Lalegre]

Exactly because of what we said you cannot change anything, because your VM is powered on and you do NOT have Hot Add enabled. That is the reason of why you see it greyed out.

Want to test all? Follow the next:

1. Create a new empty VM.
2. Select Windows Server as the OS
3. Edit the settings and enabled Hot-Add under CPU and RAM
4. Power it on.
5. Try to update the resources.
6. Power it off.
7. Disable the Hot-Add options.
8. Power it on again.
9. Try to update the resources again.

[dprivateb]

i dont want to make a change to the CPU. i want to make a change to the network. i cant save my change to the network because of the OK button being greyed out. the only indication anything is wrong is the exclamation point in the cpu section which im not trouching at all. it is in this state when i open up the settings.

[NicolasAlauzet]

Can you try with the Flash client instead? Just to see if the error is client related. (If there's no other error to be seen, maybe a restart of vCenter can help)

[IRIX201110141]

Next time please mark the things you wanna to edit and not other item.

Can it be that exiting PCI Passtrough devices blocks the editing of a running VM in general?

For sure you can edit shared vGPU configurated VMs when they are up and running. I dont have a PCI Passtrough Host/Device for testing.

Regards,
Joerg

[IRIX201110141]

dprivateb​

OK! I  found a VM in my environment which showing the exact same behavior as yours.  Solution was quite simple. If you move the mouse over the red marked CPU count you see simething like "Invalid CPU configuration for this VM". My my case is was 1 vCPU which means 1 vCore and 1 vSocket.  It looks like that vCenter have lost track of this VM settings.

- Shutdown the VM

- Reconfigure the CPU and save the config (OK button was active because of VM was shutdown)

- Power on the VM

Now youre able to reconfigure the VM (Network, Disk, USB...) while the VM was powered up and the OK button is there. The Red warning sign went away and the VM react as normal.

Regards,
Joerg

[charithab]

This is a bug with vSphere Client (HTML5) - partial functionality and use vSphere Web Client (Flash) this error cannot see there.