Unable to delete a flat-vmdk file from VMFS5 volume, even though the file is not in use and all other files were deleted in that folder. It was last modified many months ago, so we're not sure what is locking the file.

[Anupreet01]

Unable to delete a flat-vmdk file from VMFS5 volume, even though the file is not in use and all other files were deleted in that folder. It was last modified many months ago, so we're not sure what is locking the file. How can we unlock it?

[jrmunday]

See this KB article;

http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=10051

[lvaibhavt]

We had a similar issue where in we were unable to delete a flat.vmdk ....

This was the only file in the datastore and the associated VM was deleted earlier manually

we checked and found that under vmfs/volumes/ there was a snapshot file for this vmdk because of which we were unable to delete the file

we deleted the snapshot file and then we were able to delete the flat file