"A general system error occurred: PBM error occurred during PreProcessReconfigureSpec: pbm.fault.PBMFault" Error when trying to Hot add a disk to a virtual machine

Products

• VMware vCenter Server

Issue/Introduction

Symptoms:

• Hot adding a disk to a virtual machine fails with this error:
  
  A general system error occurred: PBM error occurred during PreProcessReconfigureSpec: pbm.fault.PBMFault; Error when trying to run pre-provision validation; Not able to find current placement hub of entity: (pbm.ServerObjectRe
   
• This issue is not seen when using the Host Client.
• In the sps.log file, there are entries similar to:
  
  2017-05-12T12:13:16.923-07:00 [pool-21-thread-9] WARN opId=VmConfigFormMediator-applyOnMultiEntity-203-ngc-e com.vmware.vim.storage.common.vc.impl.VcQueryImpl - No virtual devices found for given vm : vm-53906
  2017-05-12T12:13:16.923-07:00 [pool-21-thread-9] ERROR opId=VmConfigFormMediator-applyOnMultiEntity-203-ngc-e com.vmware.pbm.prov.impl.PreProvisionServiceImpl - Not able to find current placement hub of entity: (pbm.ServerObjectRef) {
  dynamicType = null,
  dynamicProperty = null,
  objectType = virtualDiskId,
  key = vm-53906:2000,
  serverUuid = ########-####-####-####-########86F0
   
• In the vpxd.log file, there are entries similar to:
  
  2017-05-12T12:13:16.926-07:00 error vpxd[7F2E138F1700] [Originator@6876 sub=pbm opID=VmConfigFormMediator-applyOnMultiEntity-203-ngc-e] PBMCallback: PreProvisionProcess: PreProvisionProcess failed with : Error when trying to run pre-provision validation
  2017-05-12T12:13:16.927-07:00 error vpxd[7F2E138F1700] [Originator@6876 sub=pbm opID=VmConfigFormMediator-applyOnMultiEntity-203-ngc-e] PBMCallback: HandleExternalFaultMessage: PBM error occurred during PreProcessReconfigureSpec: pbm.fault.PBMFault;
  --> Error when trying to run pre-provision validation;
  --> Not able to find current placement hub of entity: (pbm.ServerObjectRef) {
  --> dynamicType = null,
  --> dynamicProperty = null,
  --> objectType = virtualDiskId,
  --> key = vm-53906:2000,
  --> serverUuid = ########-####-####-####-########86F0

 

 

 

 

Environment

VMware vCenter Server 6.x

VMware vCenter Server 7.x

Resolution

To work around this issue, stop and start the sps service and retry Hot adding the disk to the virtual machine. For more information, see Stopping, starting, or restarting VMware vCenter Server Appliance 6.x services (2109887).

To restart the SPS service per the above KB specifically, use these commands:

service-control --stop vmware-sps
service-control --start vmware-sps

Additional Information

Stopping, starting, or restarting VMware vCenter Server Appliance 6.x services