ESXi Invalid Operation for Device 3

Sometimes we have required to change the configuration of our virtual machine. It can be our processor setting or it can be a hard disk setting or anything else related to a virtual machine. But we can't modify our virtual machine hardware settings. It say's "Failed to reconfigure virtual machine <VM Name>. Invalid operation for device <device number>". Here <VM Name> is representing the VM Machine Name and <device number> is representing the hardware serial number. Just like below:-

The error message will be as like as below:- 

Failed to reconfigure virtual machine Internal DNS. Invalid operation for device 1

Using both platform vCenter and ESXi we can't modify the hardware settings. In this tutorial, we will discuss how to overcome this issue.

The resolution of this problem is simple. Just check whether if there are any snapshots available for this virtual machine. If so then you have to delete that. Because of that snapshot, VMware can't modify the VM hardware settings.

After deleting the snapshot, you can change the hardware settings for the virtual machine. Still now if you can't do that then use the VMware PowerCLI method to modify the hardware settings. Execute the below command using the below command:-

Get-HardDisk -vm MyVMName | where {$_.name -eq "Hard disk 1"} | Set-HardDisk -capacityGB 100

[Replace "MyVMName" with your virtual machine name, replace "Hard disk 1" with your virtual hard disk name, replace "100" with your hard disk size.]