Cannot copy/paste large amounts of data from/to a virtual machine clipboard using the Virtual Machine Console

Products

• VMware vCenter Server
• VMware vSphere ESXi

Issue/Introduction

Symptoms:

• When using the a Virtual Machine Console, opened from the vSphere Client or vSphere Web Client, copying/pasting large amounts of data from/to the virtual machine's clipboard fails.
  
• This issue does not occur if you copy/paste the same amount of data through a Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) session.
  

Environment

VMware vCenter Server 5.0.x
VMware ESXi 4.0.x Embedded
VMware ESXi 4.0.x Installable
VMware ESX 4.1.x
VMware vCenter Server 4.1.x
VMware vSphere ESXi 5.1
VMware vSphere ESXi 5.0
VMware ESXi 4.1.x Embedded
VMware vCenter Server 5.5.x
VMware vCenter Server 5.1.x
VMware vSphere ESXi 5.5
VMware ESXi 4.1.x Installable
VMware vCenter Server 4.0.x
VMware ESX 4.0.x

Cause

This issue occurs as the copy/paste feature of the Virtual Machine Console is limited to 64 KB of plain text.

Resolution

This is a known limitation of the product.

Additional Information

To be alerted when this article is updated, click the subscribe button [cid:[email protected]] . For more information on KB subscription features, see the Knowledge Base Article FAQs: How to Subscribe to VMware Knowledge Base Articles (76417).