Unable to create linked clone of a virtual machine from VMFS5/NFS to VMFS6

Products

• VMware vSphere ESXi

Issue/Introduction

Symptoms:
When you have a Virtual machine with existing vmfsSparse snapshots residing on VMFS5/NFS, you experience the below symptoms:

• You are unable to create a linked of clone of virtual machine on VMFS6 datastore.
• In the /var/log/hostd.log file, you see the entries similar to:

2016-12-01T20:51:26.855Z error hostd[1001391775] [Originator@6876 sub=Default opID=4927fa8-01-c5-1b26 user=vpxuser:VSPHERE.LOCAL\Administrator] Create Child /vmfs/volumes/584087d0-4942295d-79d6-0200189f704b/linkedclone-createnewchild-power-on.snap-on/linkedclone-createnewchild-power-on.snap-on_5-000001.vmdk off /vmfs/volumes/49330f2e-1373c73a/vm-test-vpx-1480625211-6175-power-on.snap-on-main-245-13/fixedname-000003.vmdk failed (1): One of the parameters supplied is invalid
 

Note: The preceding log excerpts are only examples. Date, time, and environmental variables may vary depending on your environment.

Environment

VMware vSphere ESXi 6.0

Cause

This issue occurs because VMFS6 does not support vmfsSparse, it only supports SeSparse. VMFS5/NFS defaults to vmfsSparse to snapshots.

Resolution

To resolve this issue,

1. Consolidate all the snapshots on the VM, which is the source for the linked clone.
2. Use the LinkedClone API to explicitly specify the SeSparse snapshot type for the LinkedClone.