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niceguy001
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

vCenter 6.7 VM file is locked, unable to power on

my vcenter server went down and i couldn't power it on. the error message showed on ESXi host is:

"Failed to power on virtual machine VMware vCenter Server Appliance 6.7. An error occurred while opening configuration file”/vmfs/volumes/vsan:5276cd6e122187b6-4ce8dc94164e97fb/fcc4f35a-7a6d-bcf9-00b1-2c600cca3b7a/VMware vCenter Server Appliance 6.7.vmx”: Failed to lock the file. Click here for more details."

as shown in figure below

pastedImage_0.png

my vcenter server is version 6.7 and the esxi host that loads it is version 6.7 too.

this vcenter is located on vsanDatastore and it seemed that the files are locked by one host.

things i've tried:

1. create a new virtual machine with the same hardware configuration and mount the existing disk, but the vmdk files cannot be open therefore this VM can't be powered on.

2. i followed the instructions in this onehttps://kb.vmware.com/s/article/1008728 ,however, this didn't help much.

3. force delete the .lck files for this vcenter in the ESXi via command; didn't work, because the lock file can't be removed.

4. open the vmware.log of this vcenter VM and check messages, failed. the log can't be open due to "device or resource busy"

can anyone provide some clues?

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johncol
VMware Employee
VMware Employee

use VMware Knowledge Base against the lock file to find the mac holdijg the lck, you may have to unregister the vm back onto the host holding the lock and try to power it up

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NathanosBlightc
Commander
Commander

Did you try to unregister the VM and add them from datastore browsing? If you have access to the datastores of the VSAN from ESXi, move the vCenter VM files to another local datastore of the host and then attempt to start the vCenter server...

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niceguy001
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

i tried unregister VM and register back from the datastore but this did not work.

anyway, thanks for providing helps, after rebooting the esxi host, my vCenter is recovered surprisingly. thank god too.

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NathanosBlightc
Commander
Commander

However it was related to the VSAN health and its communication with that host. So consider and check the log files anyway, it will help you to avoid repeating of this issue

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