Operations on a deployed virtual machine fail

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Operations on deployed virtual machines fail. The error "The allocation of the image volume either failed or timed out " shows in the compute log for the host in the /var/log/nova/ directory. However, this error might also display for other reasons.

Review the information in the appropriate section, depending on the type of storage you are using:

Deploying multiple virtual machines from a single image on any type of storage device

When you deploy multiple virtual machines from a single image, the volume cloning only allows a single clone to be executed on a volume. This issue happens when more deploys are attempted than can be serviced before the deploy cloning operation times out.

Resolution

To ensure that the operations do not fail, spread multiple deploys across multiple images. The number of virtual machines that can be deployed from a single image before the compute timeout is exceeded depends on storage controller and the workload on the storage controller.

Deploying multiple virtual machines from a single image on an SVC storage device

When you deploy multiple virtual machines that have storage on SAN Volume Controller (SVC) or IBM® IBM Storwize® 7000 from a single image that is on SVC, cascaded dependent FlashCopy® mappings are created between the virtual machine boot disks and the image disk. As more FlashCopy mappings are created, delete, capture, and resize of the virtual machine can take longer and exceed time out values and fail.

Resolution

To ensure that the operations do not fail, do not perform delete, capture, and resize operations on virtual machines while the FlashCopy is active. To check whether the FlashCopy is active, log in to your SAN Volume Controller and click the Copy Services icon. Click FlashCopy Mappings and search for a volume that contains the name of the virtual machine.

Volumes on a mirrored volume cannot be resized until the flashcopy and copy sync are completed. To determine whether there is a replication sync in progress, run lsvdisksyncprogress on the SAN Volume Controller.
Note: When using mirroring, there might be a delay before the resize is reflected on the SVC. The wait time depends on the size of the virtual machine being resized.