Tasks Cannot Be Canceled from Monitor > Tasks in the vSphere Client
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Tasks Cannot Be Canceled from Monitor > Tasks in the vSphere Client

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Article ID: 408491

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Updated On:

Products

VMware vCenter Server

Issue/Introduction

In the vSphere Client, you may encounter issues when trying to cancel in-progress tasks from the Monitor > Tasks view of a vCenter object (for example, a host, cluster, or virtual machine).
When you right-click a task in this list and select Cancel, the cancellation request is not executed and the task continues to run until it either completes or fails on its own.

By contrast, the Cancel option works as expected for the same task if initiated from the Recent Tasks panel at the bottom of the vSphere Client.

This discrepancy can lead to confusion and delayed troubleshooting, especially when administrators expect a cancellation request from Monitor > Tasks to take immediate effect.

Environment

vCenter 8.x 

Cause

The problem is due to a defect in how cancellation requests are handled by the vSphere Client user interface:

  • In the Monitor > Tasks view, the client fails to pass the cancel request correctly to vCenter Server.

  • As a result, vCenter never issues the command to terminate the running task, so the task continues uninterrupted.

  • The Recent Tasks panel, however, correctly invokes the cancel action, which is why cancellation works as intended from that panel.

This behavior is purely UI-related; no backend issue exists with the vCenter task management system itself.

Resolution

This issue has been addressed in a later release of VMware vCenter Server. The fix ensures that:

  • Task cancellation requests initiated from Monitor > Tasks are correctly sent to vCenter Server.

  • Both Monitor > Tasks and Recent Tasks panels provide consistent behavior for canceling running tasks.

Workarounds (prior to upgrade):

If you are running an affected version of vCenter Server, you can use the following options until you are able to upgrade:

  1. Use the Recent Tasks panel to cancel tasks. This remains fully functional and is the recommended method.

  2. If the Recent Tasks panel is hidden, enable it by selecting View > Recent Tasks in the vSphere Client.

  3. Alternatively, allow the task to complete naturally or manually stop the underlying operation (for example, pausing a VM migration or halting a backup job) depending on the task type.

Permanent Fix:

Upgrade to the vCenter Server release where this defect is resolved (for example, VMware vCenter Server 8.0 Update 3g.

After applying the fix, task cancellations work consistently across all task views in the vSphere Client.

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