Last night we updated the ESX servers here, and in the process migrated machines from one node to another (by placing one node of the cluster in maintenance mode). During this migration, one of the VMs stopped running. When we had completed the migration and had updated the ESX server, we brought the system back up and tried to start this VM.
First, we looked in the VM's directory and saw that the VMDK file had a different name, with -flat at the end (before .vmdk). We renamed the file, removing the -flat extension, and that's when we saw these messages. ESX Server still gbehaved as though the file did not exist or was unreadable. Here is an excerpt from the log:
Feb 27 14:40:08.232: vmx| KHZEstimate 2931923
Feb 27 14:40:08.232: vmx| MHZEstimate 2932
Feb 27 14:40:08.232: vmx| NumVCPUs 1
Feb 27 14:40:08.247: vmx| UUID: location-UUID is 56 4d d4 6a 87 30 4c 0b-74 f8 63 41 09 76 1a a7
Feb 27 14:40:08.247: vmx| WORKER: Creating new group with numThreads=2 (2)
Feb 27 14:40:08.337: vmx| Mapped mainmem as pageable
Feb 27 14:40:08.361: vmx| MStat: Creating Stat vm.uptime
Feb 27 14:40:08.361: vmx| MStat: Creating Stat vm.suspendTime
Feb 27 14:40:08.361: vmx| MStat: Creating Stat vm.powerOnTimeStamp
Feb 27 14:40:08.369: vmx| VMXVmdb_LoadRawConfig: Loading raw config
Feb 27 14:40:08.376: vmx| Unable to find file cognos4dios.zurich.ibm.com.vmdk
Feb 27 14:40:08.378: vmx| Unable to find file cognos4dios.zurich.ibm.com.vmdk
Feb 27 14:40:08.378: vmx| DISK: OPEN scsi0:0 'cognos4dios.zurich.ibm.com.vmdk' persistent R[(null)]
Feb 27 14:40:08.380: vmx| Unable to find file cognos4dios.zurich.ibm.com.vmdk
Feb 27 14:40:08.382: vmx| DISKLIB-LINK : "cognos4dios.zurich.ibm.com.vmdk" : failed to open (The system cannot find the file specified).
Feb 27 14:40:08.382: vmx| DISKLIB-CHAIN : "cognos4dios.zurich.ibm.com.vmdk" : failed to open (The system cannot find the file specified).
Feb 27 14:40:08.382: vmx| DISKLIB-LIB : Failed to open 'cognos4dios.zurich.ibm.com.vmdk' with flags 0xa (The system cannot find the file specified).
Feb 27 14:40:08.382: vmx| Msg_Post: Error
Feb 27 14:40:08.382: vmx| http://msg.disk.fileNotFound VMware ESX Server cannot find the virtual disk "cognos4dios.zurich.ibm.com.vmdk". Please verify the path is valid and try again.
Feb 27 14:40:08.382: vmx| http://msg.disk.noBackEnd Cannot open the disk 'cognos4dios.zurich.ibm.com.vmdk' or one of the snapshot disks it depends on.
Feb 27 14:40:08.382: vmx| http://msg.disk.configureDiskError Reason: The system cannot find the file specified.----
Feb 27 14:40:08.399: vmx| Module DiskEarly power on failed.
Feb 27 14:40:08.399: vmx| VMX_PowerOn: ModuleTable_PowerOn = 0
Feb 27 14:40:08.401: vmx| WORKER: asyncOps=0 maxActiveOps=0 maxPending=0 maxCompleted=0
Feb 27 14:40:08.752: vmx| vmdbPipe_Streams Couldn't read: OVL_STATUS_EOF
Feb 27 14:40:08.752: vmx| VMX idle exit
Feb 27 14:40:08.764: vmx| Flushing VMX VMDB connections
Feb 27 14:40:08.771: vmx| IPC_exit: disconnecting all threads
Feb 27 14:40:08.771: vmx| VMX exit (0).
Feb 27 14:40:08.772: vmx| VMX has left the building: 0.
The VMDK file is most definitely there, but VMware appears to be unable to open it. For what it's worth, we also noticed a .hlog file in the VM's directory on the server:
cognos4dios.zurich.ibm.com-3c377802.hlog:
c0 c2 71 17 14 6e b6 01-49 fb 00 1a 64 35 e9 20
Can anyone shed light on this? Does the -flat suffix in the VMDK file have special significance? Any recommendations for rescuing this VM?
Thanks very much in advance.
Regards,
Michael L.
--
Michael A. Lowry
mlowry.blogspot.com
