When a virtual machine with windows guest is encrypted with KMS encryption it fails to quiesce.
Or, When there are changes to the VM storage policy which uses KMS encryption, it fails to quiesce.
Cloning of such virtual machines also fails.
YYYY-MM-DDTHH:MM:SSZ error vpxd[06617] [Originator@6876 sub=vpxLro opID=m1jcsc5p-15821002-auto-9f3kb-h5:71079550-94-01] [VpxLRO] Unexpected Exception: N3Vim5Fault23ApplicationQuiesceFault9ExceptionE(Fault cause: vim.fault.ApplicationQuiesceFault
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YYYY-MM-DDTHH:MM:SSZ In(05) vmx - SnapshotVMX_TakeSnapshot start: 'VM-NAME, deviceState=0, lazy=0, quiesced=1, forceNative=0, tryNative=1, saveAllocMaps=0
YYYY-MM-DDTHH:MM:SSZ In(05) vcpu-4 - Msg_Post: Warning
YYYY-MM-DDTHH:MM:SSZ In(05) vcpu-4 - [msg.snapshot.quiesce.startfail] Failed to start quiescing operation in the virtual machine.
YYYY-MM-DDTHH:MM:SSZ In(05)+ vcpu-4 - The error message was: Error initializing quiesce operation.
YYYY-MM-DDTHH:MM:SSZ In(05) vcpu-4 - SnapshotVMXTakeSnapshotComplete: Snapshot 0 failed: Failed to quiesce the virtual machine (29).
[vmbackup] [3556] Requested quiescing cannot be initialized
VMware vCenter server 7.x
VMware vCenter server 8.x
VMware vSphere ESXi 7.x
VMware vSphere ESXi 8.x
As per Application quiesced snapshots are not supported for encrypted VMs.
We can take the filesystem consistent snapshot instead.
App consistent to filesystem consistent fallback generally happens automatically. We don't need to make any changes to guest side.
In such cases, issue is with VMware snapshot provider service.
While installing VMware tools, could be an issue with VMware snapshot provider service.
Or the VMware snapshot provider service is disabled by default.
To resolve the issue ,
1. We need to enable the VMware snapshot provider service.
Go to services.msc in windows OS
Right click VMware snapshot provider service> go to properties:
Change the startup type to Automatic and then start the service.
Re-attempt clone or snapshot with quiesce, it will be successful.
2. If enabling VMware snapshot provider service fails, reinstall VMware tools on the guest os and check if the service is up and running.
App-quiescing is disabled in ESXi host side for encrypted VM and filesystem quiescing is forcibly requested (which requires VMware snapshot provider working well) when taking quiesced snapshot