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ArchParks
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

Weird crashing of all VMs on one host with errors saying "possibly due to underlying storage issues"

This morning, my phone went off the hook with users saying the network was down. I logged on and the host running the VM's that were down was still up and running however it was showing numerous errors. I just clicked on the two VMs, told them to start and all was well.

Both virtual machines recorded an error similar to this:

Description,Type,Date Time,Task,Target,User

"Message on VM1: The lock protecting /vmfs/volumes/f9dbfb7a-dd12f999/VM1/VM1.vmdk has been lost, possibly due to underlying storage issues. If this virtual machine is configured to be highly available, ensure that the virtual machine is running on some other host before clicking OK. ",Information,10/22/2013 12:00 AM,,VM1,User

Does anyone have any clue as to the problem? The host is running Esxi 5.5 which is an upgrade from 5.1 which was an upgrade from 5.0.

Thanks!

Arch

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vmroyale
Immortal
Immortal

it was showing numerous errors

Can you provide more info here?

So two VMs total were down - out of how many total VMs on the host?

Brian Atkinson | vExpert | VMTN Moderator | Author of "VCP5-DCV VMware Certified Professional-Data Center Virtualization on vSphere 5.5 Study Guide: VCP-550" | @vmroyale | http://vmroyale.com
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BenLiebowitz
Expert
Expert

Also, what kind of storage are you using?  NFS?  iSCSI?  Fiber?  It sounds like you had a connectivity issue with your storage. 

Ben Liebowitz, VCP vExpert 2015, 2016, & 2017 If you found my post helpful, please mark it as helpful or answered to award points.
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ArchParks
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

The host only runs two virtual machines and both died.

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BenLiebowitz
Expert
Expert

It doesn't matter if it had 2 VMs or 200 VMs, if the storage went down and the OS tried to write from memory to disk and the disk wasn't accessible, the VM(s) would have crashed. 

What kind of storage are you running?  Are the VMs on local storage or a SAN?  If a SAN, how is it connected to the ESXi host? 

Ben Liebowitz, VCP vExpert 2015, 2016, & 2017 If you found my post helpful, please mark it as helpful or answered to award points.
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ArchParks
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

The storage is all local. The Host has a LSI raid controller with four disks. The disks are divided into two RAID1 drives. One drive carries the Esxi OS as well as one of the VM's and the other RAID drive carries the other VM. The Esxi host is running version 5.5 which was an upgrade from 5.1 and 5.0. Its been running under this config for quite some time.

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BenLiebowitz
Expert
Expert

Strange that they crashed and the ESXi OS stayed up.  I would make sure the firmware & BIOS are all up to date on the host. 

Ben Liebowitz, VCP vExpert 2015, 2016, & 2017 If you found my post helpful, please mark it as helpful or answered to award points.
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