Recently ran into an issue when cloning a VM. The clone would start and would run and at about 99% it would fail with the following error:

clone_fail_1

Checking out the /var/log/vmware/hostd.log file, I saw the following error:

[2012-10-03 22:19:06.743 62040B90 error 'App' opID=D6A05DBB-0000170C-d4-bd-7b] Failed to get data ring: vmodl.fault.InvalidArgument
[2012-10-03 22:19:06.783 62040B90 error 'vm:/vmfs/volumes/4f5275da-25b5f33c-40e5-0019b9d0aecd/New Virtual Machine/New Virtual Machine.vmx' opID=D6A05DBB-0000170C-d4-bd-7b] vim.VirtualMachine vim.VirtualMachine:512 does not have any configuration information.

It looks like as it was creating the newly cloned VM, it would fail with some invalid configuration message. I actually ran across VMware KB 2012959. The KB matched my above message and from KB here are the symptoms:

Possible scenarios to consider:

  • Cloning an ide-disk virtual machine to the same ESX/ESXi 4.x host with CBT enabled fails
  • Cloning an ide-disk virtual machine from ESX/ESXi 4.x host to ESXi 5.0 host with CBT enabled is successful.
  • Cloning a SCSI-disk virtual machine from ESX/ESXi 4.x host to another ESX/ESXi 4.x host is successful.

This KB only applies if all of the following statements are true:

  • The VM in question uses IDE disks and Change Block Tracking (also referred to as CTK)
  • vCenter Server version is 5.0 or higher
  • The ESX(i) Server holding the VM is on version 4.x

First I wanted to check if this vm has CTK enabled. Looking at the vmx file, I see the following:

/vmfs/volumes/4f5275da-25b5f33c-40e5-0019b9d0aecd/vm/ # grep ide0 vm.vmx | grep ctk
ide0:0.ctkEnabled = "TRUE"

That was the case. Then checking out the version of ESXi:

~ # vmware -lv
VMware ESXi 4.1.0 build-348481
VMware ESXi 4.1.0 Update 1

I was definitely on version 4 of ESXi, lastly vCenter was at version 5. So I matched all the symptoms. I then followed the instructions in the KB on how to get around the issue:

To disable CBT in the configuration (.vmx) file:

  1. Power-off the virtual machine.
  2. Right click on the virtual machine and click Edit Settings.
  3. Click the Options tab then click General.
  4. Click Configuration Parameters.

  5. Locate the values below for the IDE disk and set the values to FALSE. for example:

     ide0:0.ctkEnabled = "TRUE"
 ctkEnabled = "TRUE"
  6. Click OK then OK again.
  7. Power-on the virtual machine and retry the clone operation.

After disabling Change Block Tracking on the IDE Hard Drive, the clone succeeded without any issues.