Failed to power on virtual machine <vm-name>. Device 'Bootstrap' is not available

[sam9s]

Hi All,

I am running mad to find a solution to this. I am running ESXi 6 server with 4-5 VMs. yesterday night I had a power outage and my ESXi rebooted abruptly, when it came back all the VM were stopped except one, which is a windows server 2012 VM. It was in suspended state. Starting that gives me an error Failed to power on virtual machine Domain/VPN Server 2012. Device 'Bootstrap' is not available. I tried to power off the machine from CLI but I get an error that I cannot stop the machine since its in suspended state. I tried to copy the VMDK files to another directory to see if that would work but it does not copy and again gives an error "Failed - Cannot complete the operation because the file or folder /vmfs/volumes/569ccbd9-ee08a8f4-4702-f46d0413bcee/Server 2012 DOMAIN already exists" I am all short of ideas and googling does not give me any solution. Hence opening a new thread. Please assist as I need this VM its very important.

Regards

Sammy

[sam9s]

no reply .... I know its a bit too soon to expect, but I am in a dire straight situation here need assistance a bit urgent ...

[RichardBush]

Hi,

You said you tried to power the VM off via the cli ? What command did you use ?

Have you checked for the process and tried to kill it that way.

I.e:

The esxcli command can be used locally or remotely to power off a virtual machine running on ESXi 5.x or later. For more information, see the esxcli vm Commands section in the vSphere Command-Line Interface Reference.

1. Open a console session where the esxcli tool is available, either in the ESXi Shell, the vSphere Management Assistant (vMA), or the location where the vSphere Command-Line Interface (vCLI) is installed.
2. Get a list of running virtual machines, identified by World ID, UUID, Display Name, and path to the .vmx configuration file by running this command:
   
   esxcli vm process list
   
   
   
3. Power off one of the virtual machines from the list by running this command:
   
   esxcli vm process kill --type= [soft,hard,force] --world-id= WorldNumber
   
   Notes:
   Three power-off methods are available. Soft is the most graceful, hard performs an immediate shutdown, and force should be used as a last resort.
   
   Alternate power off command syntax is: esxcli vm process kill -t [ soft,hard,force] -w WorldNumber
   
   
   
4. Repeat Step 2 and validate that the virtual machine is no longer running.

Rich

[RichardBush]

This is also worth a shot.

Resuming a suspended virtual machine causes an access violation error (1006111) | VMware KB

Rich

[ramanjaneyar]

Hello...!!

Wanted to check if you powered this off manually? if so, migrate the VM to another host and check the behavior.

[sam9s]

Hi Richard, thanks fo rthe reply, below is the command I tried

1. Get a list of all registered virtual machines, identified by their VMID, Display Name, and path to the .vmx configuration file by running this command:
   
   vim-cmd vmsvc/getallvms
   
   
2. Get the current state of a virtual machine by running this command:
   
   vim-cmd vmsvc/power.getstate VMID (replaced it with 45 my VMID)

OUTPUT ::::

Retrieved runtime info

Suspended

1. Shutdown the virtual machine using the VMID found in Step 2 and run this command:
   
   vim-cmd vmsvc/power.shutdown 45

output ::::

(vim.fault.InvalidPowerState) {

   faultCause = (vmodl.MethodFault) null,

   requestedState = "poweredOn",

   existingState = "suspended",

   msg = "Received SOAP response fault from [<cs p:1f2b2bb0, TCP:localhost:80>]: shutdownGuest

The attempted operation cannot be performed in the current state (Suspended)."

}

Running esxcli vm process list command does not return anything since it only returns running machines and I have no machine running except one that is suspended. It does not return status for suspended machine.

[sam9s]

I dont have any other host available. I tried copying the VMDK files to a new folder via datastore browser but that again gives me another error ...as stated in my OP

[sam9s]

OK richard ...

I tried following the article ....even though its for workstation and not esxi server, but non the less

1. Close VMware Workstation.
2. Locate the virtual machine's folder. For more information, see  Locating a hosted virtual machine's files (1003880)
3. Delete the .VMSS and .LCK, files.
4. Open the .vmx (virtual machine configuration) file in a text editor. For more information, see Editing the .vmx file of a VMware Workstation and VMware Player virtual machine (2057902)
5. Find the line which starts with:
   checkpoint.vmState
6. Remove everything between the quotation marks. It should look like:
   checkpoint.vmState = ""
7. Save and close the .vmx file.

RESULT :::

I did not have any .VMSS or LCK files, however I was able to edit vmx file and removed everything from checkpoint.vmState = "". THis DID clear the suspended state and VM was stopped, HOWEVER restarting it again agve me the same error Device 'Bootstrap' is not available.. 

[RichardBush]

Hi, Sorry or the late reply, think im on a somewhat different time zone.

Have you taken a look at this Upgraded from 5.0.0 to 6.0.0 and VMs error when powering on with message: "Device 'Bootstrap' is not...

It might be worth creating a new VM and attaching the disk now that the checkpoint.vmstate is cleared.

R