Attempting to resize virtual disk, having tons of problems, help please!

[Subversive]

Hi, I have a need to resize a C drive on a VM. Previously it had a size of approx 25 GB. I shut down the VM and performed the following steps. I connected to my ESX host using putty, then ran 'vmkfstools -X 80G 'Staging 03.vmdk'. This seemed to work as my virtual disk is now showing as approx 80GB, the intention. I've attached the CD drive to an ISO on my datastore which should allow me to use gparted to resize the partition for Windows. However, when I tried to power on the VM, it would say 'Canot open the disk 'vmfs/volumes/46b0b5d5-206f0716-5ef0-0019b9bd833b/Staging 03/Staging 03-000001.vmdk' or one of the snapshot disks it depends on. Reason: the parent virtual disk has been modified since the child was created'.

So, I went into the snapshot manager for this VM and told it to remove all snapshots. I got an error which said "A general system error occured: Internal Error". However, when I look in snapshot manager now I see no snapshots. So, I tried to power the VM on again and now I get the error "Unable to access a file since it is locked."

Can anyone please help me here?! I'm rather desperate.

[oreeh]

We first should move them out of the way. If we need to delete the files we can do this later on.

Execute the following commands

cd /vmfs/volumes/46b0b5d5-206f0716-5ef0-0019b9bd833b/Staging\ 03

mkdir x

mv Staging\ 03-000001-delta.vmdk x

mv Staging\ 03-000001.vmdk x

mv Staging\ 03-3de11572.hlog x

mv Staging 03.vmsd x

mv Staging 03.vmxf x

mv Staging 03.vmx x

If any of the above commands give an error - post it

If not try to power on the VM

[Subversive]

Hi, all the commands completed okay, except I had to add a \ to the bottom 3, I assume you just missed the slash.

When I try to power on the VM, same error 'Unable to access a file since it is locked'

[oreeh]

The only file now which could be locked is Staging 03-flat.vmdk

I therefore assume that there still is a process - related to the old VM - running.

Do you have a Cluste or a standalone ESX host?

Message was edited by:

oreeh

[Subversive]

I have a cluster with 2 ESX hosts.

[oreeh]

Can you vMotion the other VMs to the other ESX host and reboot this host?

[Subversive]

Unfortunately I cannot, as I have 1 critical VM running on local storage until I get my replacement SAN from Dell installed Thursday night. Any other ideas?

(I have to head home now, but I'll be back online in about 45 minutes and will respond then, thanks for all your help!)

[oreeh]

To be honest I'm out of ideas

(could be related to the fact that it is 1 AM in the morning here in Germany)

[bggb29]

You can try this, however with a stuck snapshot file I have little hopeit will help you

• Login to the service console

• You can check the VM state by typing “vmware-cmd //server.vmx getstate”

• Type “ps -ef | grep ”

• The second column is your pid of the vmkload_app of the Virtual Machine, you can also type “ps –eaf” to see all running processes

• Type “kill -9 ”

• Check VM state again, it should now be off

• Type “vmware-cmd //server.vmx start” to power on VM

Not sure if you can find a locked file this way