Hi Robert,
In VSC 4.2, we definitely had issues with supporting VM hardware version 9.
However, that was addressed in VSC 4.2.1, which provides full support for ESX 5.5 (and therefore, VM hardware versions 9 and 10).
In short, if you have deployed VSC 4.2.1, then you should be successful cloning the VM.
I can offer a couple of next steps:
1) Double check that you really are running VSC 4.2.1. I apologize if that sounds silly, but this was definitely an issue in VSC 4.2.
2) A VM of hardware version 9 cannot be run on an ESX host that is less than 5.1. I would verify the host destination(s) are all 5.1 or better.
3) Can you successfully clone the VM (with hardware version 9) using vSphere client's built-in clone action (i.e., not using the VSC / rapid clone feature)? If it fails outside of VSC, then there's nothing we can do within VSC to make it work.
If none of the above help, then if you could provide the kamino.log and a screen capture of the error, then we can determine the source of the issue.
Thanks,
Brian