Centos – vmware esx4.1 virtual disk locked after failed snapshot creation

centosvirtualizationvmware-esx

I have vmware vsphere 4 esx4.1.
I have a virtual machine with centos6 64bit OS and 3 virtual disks (50GO system/ 250 GO user data / 250 GO backup)

When I tried to take a snapshot of the VM, I got an error message like unspecifi-ed filename has bigger size than biggest size authorized by the datastore.

My problem is that the VM could not start after I got this message error because it could not get access to the 2nd and 3rd disk (only the system disk is normal). It seems that these 2 disks are locked.

I restart the physical esx machine but I had the same thing!

Could you please help! I'm realy blocked and I need your help!

Best Answer

When I've encountered similar situations, I've shut the virtual machine down and navigated to the datastore containing the VM. I use NFS for most datastores, so there are lock (.lck) files that can be removed. Easy.

However, I'm assuming you're using VMFS on local storage. The process is less-transparent. VMWare has a knowledge base article outlining the troubleshooting steps for locked VM files. Enable SSH access to the host if you can.

These virtual machine files are commonly locked for runtime:

<VMNAME>.vswp
<DISKNAME>-flat.vmdk
<DISKNAME>-<ITERATION>-delta.vmdk
<VMNAME>.vmx
<VMNAME>.vmxf
vmware.log

Since this issue occurred during a snapshot, you'll want to focus on the <DISKNAME>-flat.vmdk and <DISKNAME>-<ITERATION>-delta.vmdk files. Either way, follow the steps listed in the VMWare article.

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