vCenter Server task migration fails with the error: Failed to create journal file provider, Failed to open for write

Products

• VMware vCenter Server
• VMware vSphere ESXi

Issue/Introduction

Symptoms:

• Cannot perform provisioning operations, such as vMotion, Clone, storage DRS
  
• Cannot create new virtual machines.
• Cannot add RDM disk to a virtual machine.
• Provisioning operations (such as vMotion, Clone, or Migrate) fail.
• vCenter Server task migration fails.
• You see the error:
  
  A general system error occurred: Failed to create journal file providerFailed to open "<filename>" for write

Environment

VMware vCenter Server 4.0.x
VMware vCenter Server 5.5.x
VMware ESXi 3.5.x Installable
VMware ESXi 4.1.x Installable
VMware vCenter Server 4.1.x
VMware ESX 4.0.x
VMware ESXi 4.0.x Embedded
VMware ESXi 3.5.x Embedded
VMware ESXi 4.0.x Installable
VMware ESX Server 3.0.x
VMware vSphere ESXi 5.0
VMware ESXi 4.1.x Embedded
VMware vCenter Server 5.1.x
VMware vCenter Server 5.0.x
VMware vSphere ESXi 5.1
VMware ESX 4.1.x
VMware vSphere ESXi 5.5
VMware ESX Server 3.5.x

Cause

This issue occurs if there is not enough free disk space to store the journal information. The management components in vCenter Server and ESX/ESXi record transactions to journal files when tracking long-running operations. The path and filename cited in the error message indicate the layer that failed to create a journal file.

Resolution

For vCenter Server

The journal files for vCenter Server on Windows are located at:

• Windows 2003 and earlier – %ALLUSERSPROFILE%\Application Data\VMware\VMware VirtualCenter\journal\
• Windows 2008 and later – %PROGRAMDATA%\VMware\VMware VirtualCenter\journal\

Delete or archive the unnecessary files on this filesystem to free up disk space. Depending on your vCenter Server implementation, it is recommended to have a minimum of 40GB of disk space free on the system.

For more information, see the Hardware Requirements for vCenter Server section in the vSphere Installation and Setup guide and Investigating operating system disk space (1004007).

For ESX/ESXi hosts

The journal files in ESX/ESXi hosts are located at /var/log/vmware/journal/. This defaults to the same /var/ filesystem used for storing logs and coredumps. The historic files in the host may be consuming the disk space.

Note: To determine the filesystem that contains the /var/log/vmware/journal/ directory, run the command:

df /var/log/vmware/journal/

Delete or archive the unnecessary files on this filesystem to free up disk space. For more information on reviewing and addressing disk space consumption, see Investigating disk space on an ESX host (1003564).

Additional Information

Restarting the Management agents in ESXi
Investigating disk space on an ESX or ESXi host
Investigating operating system disk space
Installing vCenter Server 5.1 best practices
VMware ESXi 5.x host becomes unresponsive when attempting a vMotion migration or a configuration change
Installing vCenter Server 5.5 best practices
vCenter Server のタスク移行が次のエラーで失敗する：ジャーナル ファイル プロバイダを作成できませんでした。書き込み用に開けませんでした。
vCenter Server 任务迁移失败，并显示以下错误：未能创建日志文件提供程序，未能打开以进行写入