Virtual Machine Management (VMM) Inventory Error: The Task was killed because it took longer than the allowed time.

Products

• Virtual Machine Management

Issue/Introduction

 While trying to run the VMM inventory task, the task keeps failing, timing out.  In repeated "Rerun Failed" attempts, about 15% of systems are successful each run. Each subsequent attempt seems to acquire 15% more, and so on:

Status: Failed

Return Code: -1

The Task was killed because it to longer than the allowed time.  To change the time go to the task’s advanced properties.

Environment

 VMM 8.x

Cause

Source Code Change.

Resolution

The time for inventory has been reduced substantially in version 8.x of VMM and effectively reducesthe amount of time for inventory to complete.  As an example, testing showed that, before the fixes were added a scheduled inventory task previously would take around 2 hours 6 minutes,  to collect inventory against approximately 183 ESX hosts (1 vCenter and roughly 2500 VMs). Now this time has been reduced to around 43 minutes.

 

Alternately, you can increase the VMM Task Timeout value.   The steps to increase VMM task timeout value:

 

1. Go to respective task folder in Jobs and Tasks, like Inventory, DeployVM etc 

2. Right click on that folder and select Export option. 

3. Save the task xml file. 

4. Change ‘maxMinutes’ value from 60 to sufficient time like 120 in two places in that xml file.  In one case, the customer put in the value of 600, essentially telling it to wait 10 hours. 

5. Import the same xml file to back to the same task folder by right-clicking. 

6. Re-run the respective VMM task