VDP Backup Appliance will not start after deleting snapshots from locked VM

[fantom75]

I have a VM that I couldn't delete snapshots for because they were locked.  The snapshot manager didn't show any snapshots so they had to be deleted from the data store.  I powered down the backup virtual appliance and deleted the snapshots.  Now when I try to power up my backup appliance, it said "Failed to lock file" and it doesn't start:

Cannot open the disk '/vmfs/volumes/4f9219d8-8911a550-fabd-001cc45d593c/[servername]/[servername].vmdk' or one of the snapshot disks it depends on.

[RyanJMN]

It sounds like you need to remove the VMDKs from the VM that had the snapshot issue from the VDP appliance.

If I remember correctly there is a bug in VADP 5.5 that can periodically prevent the VMDK from being "hot removed" from the proxy.  Or it can also happen if DNS or vCenter are down when VDP backup job is almost complete.

How hotadd works:  vSphere 5.5 Documentation Center

[fantom75]

I removed all the backup .vmdk's  ([servername - 0000001.vmdk]) originally from the vm in question and that is what caused the backup virtual appliance to give the error Cannot open the disk '/vmfs/volumes/4f9219d8-8911a550-fabd-001cc45d593c/[servername]/[servername].vmdk' or one of the snapshot disks it depends on.  The main vmdk "[servername].vmdk" is still there.  I thought this was necessary for the vm to run.

I thought there was a way to unmount the vmdk's from the backup appliance. I don't know how I would remove the mounting of the .vmdk's from the backup appliance as it does not boot.

[fantom75 · Accepted solution]

Nevermind.  I found the mounted device to the vmdk in the edit (other devices).  I removed it and it is booting now.