BOSH Director fails when trying to create a VM because the snapshot is missing

Products

• Operations Manager

Issue/Introduction

BOSH Director fails when trying to create a VM and the task reports the following error during the "Creating vm" step:

[2022-06-14T15:28:21.116237 #5898] ERROR -- [req_id cpi-481277]: Error in creating vm: The object[s] '<[Vim.VirtualMachine] vm-336578>' should have the following properties: ["snapshot", "datastore"] , but they were missing these: #<Set: {"snapshot"}>

Resolution

When a stemcell is uploaded by BOSH Director, a snapshot called "initial" is created. This snapshot is used by BOSH to clone new VMs for use in a deployment. If the snapshot on the stemcell is deleted or missing, BOSH won't be able to create new VMs using the stemcell and the clone operation fails.

To resolve this, you can force BOSH Director to re-upload the stemcell with the --fix flag in order to replace previously uploaded stemcell with the same name and version. This can be achieved with the following BOSH command:

bosh upload-stemcell <STEMCELL_PATH> --fix

Please note: The stemcells are located on Ops Manager VM in the /var/tempest/stemcells directory.