VM Clone Operation Fails With "Failed to Quiesce the Virtual Machine" Error

Products

• VMware vCenter Server
• VMware vSphere ESXi

Issue/Introduction

When attempting to clone a powered-on Windows virtual machine, administrators may encounter errors such as:

"An error occurred while quiescing the virtual machine. See the virtual machine's event log for details. An error occurred while taking a snapshot: Failed to quiesce the virtual machine. An error occurred while saving the snapshot: Failed to quiesce the virtual machine."

There is no visible option to disable quiescing in the cloning workflow, but the snapshot operation still attempts to quiesce the OS in the background.

VM event logs show VssSyncStart operation failed: IDispatch error #8454 (0x80042306), error code 5.

vmware.log

YYYY-MM-DDTHH:MM:SSZ| vmx| I125: SNAPSHOT: SnapshotPrepareTakeDoneCB: Prepare phase complete (The operation completed successfully).
YYYY-MM-DDTHH:MM:SSZ| vcpu-1| I125: ToolsBackup: changing quiesce state: IDLE -> STARTED
YYYY-MM-DDTHH:MM:SSZ| vmx| I125: Msg_Post: Warning
YYYY-MM-DDTHH:MM:SSZ| vmx| I125: [msg.snapshot.quiesce.vmerr] The guest OS has reported an error during quiescing.
YYYY-MM-DDTHH:MM:SSZ| vmx| I125+ The error code was: 5
YYYY-MM-DDTHH:MM:SSZ| vmx| I125+ The error message was: 'VssSyncStart' operation failed: IDispatch error #8454 (0x80042306)
YYYY-MM-DDTHH:MM:SSZ| vmx| I125: ----------------------------------------

Environment

VMware vCenter Server

VMware vSphere ESXi

Cause

This issue arises when the cloned VM contains a GPT disk that lacks a Microsoft Reserved (MSR) partition.

• vSphere's cloning and backup operations leverage the Microsoft Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS) for quiesced snapshot creation.
• During snapshot creation, the VSS framework sends IOCTL commands (specifically, IOCTL_DISK_SET_SNAPSHOT_INFO) to each VM disk. If a GPT disk is missing the MSR partition, VSS fails with error 0x80042306, causing the overall snapshot and clone operation to fail.

The invocation of quiesced snapshot logic is intrinsic to the vSphere cloning process for powered-on VMs. This architectural behavior is not unique to vSphere 8.x, but the error is most commonly exposed when disk partitioning requirements are unmet for VSS-based operations.

Resolution

Recommended Solution:

Update the disk configuration of the virtual machine so that all GPT disks contain a Microsoft Reserved (MSR) partition.

• Use Windows Disk Management or DiskPart to add an MSR partition to each GPT disk if missing. This ensures that future quiesced snapshot and cloning operations succeed without VSS errors.
• Reference: Quiesced snapshot of Windows Server virtual machine fails. Error 'VssSyncStart' operation failed: IDispatch error #8454 (0x80042306) seen in vmware.log

Workaround:

Power off the VM prior to cloning. This prevents VSS invocation and ensures a successful clone.