SCVMM refresh fails with 0x80338043 / 0x80338048 – WinRM MaxEnvelopeSize issue

Scenario

While troubleshooting SCVMM (Virtual Machine Manager 2025), I encountered an issue where:

“Refresh virtual machine properties” failed

Only one specific cluster was affected

Other clusters were working normally

Hosts were healthy

WinRM service was running

Kerberos authentication worked

Local WMI queries on cluster nodes worked

However, remote CIM calls from the VMM management server failed with:

HRESULT 0x80338043
The WS-Management service cannot process the request because the XML is invalid.

Running:

Get-CimInstance -ComputerName <cluster-node> -Namespace root\mscluster -Class MSCluster_Cluster

worked locally on the node, but failed when executed remotely from the VMM server. Using:

winrm helpmsg 0x80338048

returned:

The response that the WS-Management service computed exceeds the maximum envelope size in the request.

Root Cause

The issue was not related to: • Kerberos • SPN • WMI corruption • Cluster health The root cause was WinRM MaxEnvelopeSizekb on the VMM management server.

The affected cluster had significantly more objects (VMs, roles, metadata). The WSMan response exceeded the default 8192 KB envelope size.

As a result, the XML response was truncated, leading to the “XML is invalid” error.

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Resolution

Increase the WinRM envelope size on the VMM server:

winrm set winrm/config '@{MaxEnvelopeSizekb="512000"}'

After increasing the envelope size:

• Remote CIM queries worked immediately • SCVMM refresh jobs completed successfully

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Takeaway

If SCVMM fails only for larger clusters and you see:

• 0x80338043 • 0x80338048 • XML-related WSMan errors Check WinRM MaxEnvelopeSizekb on the VMM management server before investigating authentication or rebuilding WMI.

Sometimes the XML is not invalid — it is simply too large.