Unable to make change to VM's Hard Disk Storage Policy on a powered on VM

Products

• VMware vSphere ESXi

Issue/Introduction

When trying to change a VM Hard Disk Storage Policy, while the VM is powered on, you see the following error:

Storage policy change failure: This virtual disk requires a feature not supported by this program

Environment

ESXi 8.0 and later

Cause

This is expected behavior when the VM Hard Disk is set to 'Multi-Writer':

When a VM has a 'Multi-Writer' disk, you are unable to change to VM hard disk storage policy while the VM is powered on.

If the VM hard disk storage policy is changed on one VM, and not the other VM that is sharing this hard disk, then there is a potential danger of data corruption.

As a result, this behavior is expected and act as a safe guard to avoid any data corruption. 

Resolution

• Power off both VM's that are sharing the same hard disk
• Make the VM hard disk storage policy change
• Power both VM's back on