Error "Permission to perform this operation was denied" when renaming vCenter roles in German

Products

• VMware vCenter Server

Issue/Introduction

• A "Permission to perform this operation was denied" error occurs when assigning or using a vCenter role that was cloned and subsequently renamed while the vSphere Client session was set to **German (Deutsch)**.
• Error: `Permission to perform this operation was denied. You do not hold privileges "virtual machine <vm-id> : [Host profile > Clear, Site Recovery Manager > Recovery Plan > Recovery]"`
• The issue persists even if the role was cloned from the full "Administrator" role.
• Specific privileges are silently removed or disabled after saving the role in the German UI.

Environment

VMware vCenter Server 8.0.3

Cause

The issue is caused by a localization mapping conflict. The German translation for two distinct Host Profile permissions ("Clear" and "Delete") happens to use the identical translated word ("Löschen"). Due to a flaw in how vSphere Client internally builds the list of available permissions for the Roles editor, when two permissions share the exact same translated name, one of them is silently dropped from the list before it's ever shown in the UI: this happens purely because of the duplicate translated text, and is not related to renaming the role or any specific action performed.

When a role is saved or renamed in the German UI, the system fails to distinguish between these identically named localized strings, causing specific underlying privileges (like `Host profile > Clear`) to be dropped or disabled without user notification.

Resolution

This is issue will be fixed in an upcoming 8.x patch release.

Workaround

Perform role creation/editing with the vSphere Client UI language set to English.