Hello,
I had a VM running on an Equallogic SAN. This has been running fine for a long time. However we recently experienced the VM hang. On further inspection I couldn't power down the VM or migrate at all. I also noticed the Storage Usage on summary reported as 0.
As I couldn't do anything with the VM I migrated other VMs off the host and rebooted. When the host started back up the VM was marked as inaccessible. I removed from the inventory and then went to re-add. The register VM button was greyed out and I also couldn't register with the VSphere client wizard either.
I then tried to re-add by logging into the host and adding directly there with the register VM wizard. This ran through successfully but just added an inaccessible VM with a random numerical name.
I then investigated the Datastore and found there was a vmname.vmx.lck present. I tried to delete this and was unable to do so. I have tried with various rf commands and run through all unlocking documents using vmfsfilelockinfo which reports that is it locked in exclusive mode by the host which I rebooted. I rebooted it again followed by other hosts in the cluster (thank god for 10GB vmotion) and the lock still persists.
I have also unmounted that datastore from the cluster, and rebooted the SAN (only this VM running on it). Still the lock persists.
I also cannot copy any of the VMDKs or vmx from the datastore to another as I am assuming this is to do with the lock too.
Has anyone come up against this issue before?
Thanks,
I managed to fix this and in case anyone else is struggling, here is what I did.
Using voma version 0.8 and above. Sample commands to check for errors are:
voma -m vmfs -f check -d /vmfs/devices/disks/naa.xxxxxx:1
voma -m vmfs -f check -d /vmfs/devices/disks/naa.xxxxxx
and the big fix:
voma -m vmfs -f fix -d /vmfs/devices/disks/naa.xxxxxx:1
voma -m vmfs -f fix -d /vmfs/devices/disks/naa.xxxxxx
I ran each command in that sequence above. It reported that 0 errors had been fixed but I was then allowed to register the VM and it booted fine.
Apparently ESXi 6.7 update 2 (which we already had) gives you version version 0.8 which is the version that works the magic.
The following 3rd party information helped massively:
https://bakingclouds.com/esxi-6-7-update-2-with-new-voma-version-0-8-now-supports-vmfs6/
the VMWare tech do is here:
https://kb.vmware.com/s/article/2036767
Hopefully this will save someone the hours I wasted on this!
Pls have a look on below KB if this helps:
Thanks for the reply, I have already gone through the steps outlined in that article. There are no processes associated with the locked VM. I have identified the host which has the lock and rebooted but the problems persists.
Sorry for short answer - its 430 in the morning here ....
In worst case vmfs-locks can be patched. If you need help with that feel free to call on skype.
Ulli
I managed to fix this and in case anyone else is struggling, here is what I did.
Using voma version 0.8 and above. Sample commands to check for errors are:
voma -m vmfs -f check -d /vmfs/devices/disks/naa.xxxxxx:1
voma -m vmfs -f check -d /vmfs/devices/disks/naa.xxxxxx
and the big fix:
voma -m vmfs -f fix -d /vmfs/devices/disks/naa.xxxxxx:1
voma -m vmfs -f fix -d /vmfs/devices/disks/naa.xxxxxx
I ran each command in that sequence above. It reported that 0 errors had been fixed but I was then allowed to register the VM and it booted fine.
Apparently ESXi 6.7 update 2 (which we already had) gives you version version 0.8 which is the version that works the magic.
The following 3rd party information helped massively:
https://bakingclouds.com/esxi-6-7-update-2-with-new-voma-version-0-8-now-supports-vmfs6/
the VMWare tech do is here:
https://kb.vmware.com/s/article/2036767
Hopefully this will save someone the hours I wasted on this!