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rajen450m
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Cannot Power on or relocate virtual machine - Virtual Machine disk descriptor file is missing

Virtual Machine disk descriptor file is missing:

We performed vmotion of a virtual machine (VM1) and had a strange incident (errors) faced.

Relocate virtual machine

Status: The VM failed to resume on the destination during early power on.

Error stack:

The source detected that the destination failed to resume.

The VM failed to resume on the destination during early power on.

Power On virtual machine

Status: File /vmfs/volumes/<datastore>/VM1/VM1.vmdk was not found

Error stack:

An error was received from the ESX host while powering on VM VM1

Failed to start the virtual machine.

Module 'Disk' power on failed.

Cannot open the disk '/vmfs/volumes/<datastore id>/VM1/VM1.vmdk' or one of the snapshot disks it depends on.

The system cannot find the file specified

File system specific implementation of Lookup[file] failed

File system specific implementation of Lookup[file] failed

File system specific implementation of LookupAndOpen[file] failed

File system specific implementation of Lookup[file] failed

VMware ESX cannot find the virtual disk "/vmfs/volumes//<datastore>/VM1/VM1.vmdk ". Verify the path is valid and try again.

When we browse to check the files in datastore>VM folder, there was no VM1.vmdk of the virtual machine and we can see VM1-flat.vmdk and VM1-ctk.vmdk files?????

We have re-created the VM1.vmdk file and brought VM live in production (as mentioned in the link),

My Question is:

What could be the reason for vmdk descriptor file is missing???

How all these days it was working fine without any issue??

Raj M Please mark helpful or correct if my answer resolved your issue. Visit www.hypervmwarecloud.com for my blog posts, step-by-step procedures etc.,
1 Solution

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rajen450m
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Thank you SupreetK

Yes i knew it that descriptor file my might be deleted or corrupted.

Recreating the descripto file as per the below KB resolved our issue....

VMware Knowledge Base

Raj M Please mark helpful or correct if my answer resolved your issue. Visit www.hypervmwarecloud.com for my blog posts, step-by-step procedures etc.,

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SupreetK
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Any VM will look for all it's associated files only while powering on. Once it powers on, it will keep on running irrespective of the certain files being present. vMotion made it look for all the files and therefore, it failed. Someone might have deleted the file, backup application might have tampered the file, etc.

Cheers,

Supreet

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rajen450m
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Thank you SupreetK

Yes i knew it that descriptor file my might be deleted or corrupted.

Recreating the descripto file as per the below KB resolved our issue....

VMware Knowledge Base

Raj M Please mark helpful or correct if my answer resolved your issue. Visit www.hypervmwarecloud.com for my blog posts, step-by-step procedures etc.,
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RonnyNorway
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rajen, you should not mark Your own answer as "correct answer", but the one actually answering

rajen450m
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Hi Ronny, The point here to mark answer correct was to close this discussion, so that others no need to waste time on my issue.

Since the KB resolved my issue and want to update here to helpful others, moreover people while searching for similar issue to click on discussion to know the answer...

Raj M Please mark helpful or correct if my answer resolved your issue. Visit www.hypervmwarecloud.com for my blog posts, step-by-step procedures etc.,
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SupreetK
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Your issue was resolved even before you posted here. In relation to your issue, you had a query and we have tried to answer it. Your query never asked how to recreate descriptor files.

Cheers,

Supreet

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rajen450m
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Yes...

I missed it (forgot that), i have updated the link as well in my question....

Ok i just un-selected it (correct answer)...

Raj M Please mark helpful or correct if my answer resolved your issue. Visit www.hypervmwarecloud.com for my blog posts, step-by-step procedures etc.,
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