Applying a storage policy to powered on virtual machine fails with error "The attempted operation cannot be performed in the current state ("Powered on")"

Products

• VMware vSAN

Issue/Introduction

Symptoms:

• Attempting to apply a storage policy to a powered on virtual machine fails.
• You see the following error message in the client. - The attempted operation cannot be performed in the current state ("Powered on")

Cause

If there is a virtual device of type IDE, then you will not be able to apply a storage policy while the VM is powered on.

You can verify the virtual device node type with the following steps:

1. Right click on virtual machine
2. Edit settings
3. Expand dropdown for hard disk.
4. Confirm whether or not the virtual device node is IDE (bottom of the dropdown)

Resolution

Power off the VM and then apply the storage policy.

Alternatively, if IDE mode is not necessary for the guest OS, the virtual device node type can be changed to SCSI or SATA (while the VM is powered off.). Once in SCSI or SATA mode, storage policies can be applied to the VM while it is powered on.