Why is the clone and take snapshot options greyed out in vcenter?

[mhinojosa501]

I have a vm powered off an ESX 4 host and the clone, template and take snapshot options are greyed out. any ideas?

Thanks!

[Troy_Clavell]

clones and templates are feature of vCenter. They are not available if you are logged directly into your ESX Host. You will have to use the vSphere Client and connect to vCenter.

[mhinojosa501]

Sorry, I guess I should have mentioned I am logged into Vcenter server not the host the VM lives in.

[RParker]

and if you are using vCenter, did you check the permissions? Maybe the user logged in doesn't have rights to make snapshots.

[mhinojosa501]

Yes. I am logged in as Administratro role.

[RParker]

Yes. I am logged in as Administratro role.

OK, was the VM recently migrated, maybe it didn't finish. If you right click the VM does it have to option to "complete migration"? Is it currently being backed up.. maybe it's a snapshot already, some other operation is being done to the VM so you can't do something else until that other one completes.

Or maybe the host is in between maintenance modes... meaning its trying to go INTO mainentance mode..

[mhinojosa501]

Hmmm. All good thoughts. right clicking the vm did not show any unfinished business and the host does not appear to be in between maint mode. I did verify on a difft vm clone was available so my rights are ok. How can i tell if this is a snapshot already? Ohhh wait a minute this vm was created in Lab Mgr. I've never used Lab Mgr before so that may have something to do with it. any thoughts?

THanks for all the good suggestions. :smileyhappy:

[RParker]

Ohhh wait a minute this vm was created in Lab Mgr. I've never used Lab Mgr before so that may have something to do with it. any thoughts?

We don't have lab manager either, but that brings up another idea. Maybe that VM isn't complete yet. If you clone something you can sometimes edit or manipulate the VM config, but you can't power on/off the VM or use the console, since it's not done cloning.

So can you interact with the VM? Other than that, maybe Lab Manager has rights, but maybe you need to give yourself rights to Lab Manager.. I am not sure about that.

[mhinojosa501]

Yeah lab mgr is funky. I'm gonna log into that and see if i have different options. The clone and snapshot that i was able to verify was on a non lab mgr vm.

thanks for everyone's help!

[kouji108]

is it all vm clone and snapshot option greyed out in vcenter?

-my step try to restart vcenter service first if still grey try to check permission

since take snapshot and clone is vcenter option, u can remove host that contains that vm from vcenter and re-add back to vcenter.