Creating a virtual machine in VMware vSphere ESXi fails with the error: Invalid operation for device.

Products

• VMware vCenter Server
• VMware vSphere ESXi

Issue/Introduction

Symptoms:

When you create a new virtual machine in VMware vSphere ESXi, you experience these symptoms:

• You see the error:
  
  Invalid operation for device 'X'.
    

• In the /var/run/log/hostd.log file of the host, you see entries similar to:
  
  <timestamp> Er(163) Hostd[2099365]: [Originator@6876 sub=Vmsvc.vm:/vmfs/volumes/path/to/vmx/<VM name>.vmx opID=<opID> sid=52cba52e user=vpxuser:VSPHERE.LOCAL\Administrator] ConfigRules validation failed for key-value pair {'scsi0:0.fileName', '/vmfs/volumes/path/to/vmx/<VM name>.vmdk'}
  <timestamp> In(166) Hostd[2099365]: [Originator@6876 sub=Vimsvc.ha-eventmgr opID=<opID> sid=52cba52e user=vpxuser:VSPHERE.LOCAL\Administrator] Event 2213 : Cannot create virtual disk []/vmfs/volumes/path/to/vmx/<VM name>.vmdk
  <timestamp> In(166) Hostd[2099365]: [Originator@6876 sub=Vmsvc.vm:/vmfs/volumes/path/to/vmx/<VM name>.vmx opID=<opID> sid=52cba52e user=vpxuser:VSPHERE.LOCAL\Administrator] Reconfigure failed: N3Vim5Fault22InvalidDeviceOperation9ExceptionE(Fault cause: vim.fault.InvalidDeviceOperation

 

Environment

VMware vSphere ESXi 6.x
VMware vSphere ESXi 7.x
VMware vSphere ESXi 8.x

Cause

This issue occurs when the scratch location for the host is configured as the root of the datastore with virtual machines running on the the datastore.

Resolution

Configuring a VMware vSphere ESXi host scratch partition to the root of its datastore is not recommended.

 

To resolve this issue, set the scratch location of the host to a sub-directory within the VMware vSphere ESXi host's datastore. For more information, see Creating a persistent scratch location for ESXi 8.x/7.x/6.x.