VM cloning / Storage vMotion or VM Backup task fails with errors either "Failed to copy one or more disks" or "A fatal internal error occurred"
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VM cloning / Storage vMotion or VM Backup task fails with errors either "Failed to copy one or more disks" or "A fatal internal error occurred"

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Article ID: 315419

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Updated On: 04-17-2025

Products

VMware vSphere ESX 6.x VMware vSphere ESX 7.x VMware vSphere ESX 8.x

Issue/Introduction

 

  • Storage vMotion of a virtual machine fails.

  • You see the errors similar to:

    Failed to copy one or more disks.
    Could not complete net work copy for the file "<Path of the VMDK>
     
  • In the /var/log/vpxa.log file on the ESXi host, you see the error:

    A fatal internal error occurred. See the virtual machine's log for more details. Failed to copy one or more disks.
     
  • In the /vmfs/volumes/datastore/vm_name/vmware.log file on the ESXi host, you see entries similar to:

    YYYY-MM-DD TIME.752Z| vmx| W110: SVMotion: scsi0:0: Failed to copy disk: I/O error
    YYYY-MM-DD TIME.752Z| Worker#1| W110: SVMotionMirroredModeThreadDiskCopy: Found internal error when woken up on diskCopySemaphore. Aborting storage vmotion.
     
  • In the /var/log/vmkernel.log file of the ESXi host, you see entries similar to:

    YYYY-MM-DD TIME.641Z cpu4:33440)NMP: nmp_ThrottleLogForDevice:2321: Cmd 0x28 (0x412e40448bc0, 7812129) to dev "<naa ID>" on path "vmhba2:CX:TX:LX" Failed: H:0x0 D:0x2 P:0x0 Valid sense data: 0x3 0x11 0x0. Act:NONE
    YYYY-MM-DD TIME.641Z cpu4:33440)ScsiDeviceIO: 2337: Cmd(0x412e40448bc0) 0x28, CmdSN 0x5671fa from world 7812129 to dev "<naa ID>" failed H:0x0 D:0x2 P:0x0 Valid sense data: 0x3 0x11 0x0.

    Or

    <Date-Time> cpu59:12873043)ScsiDeviceIO: 2652: Cmd(0x43be4f266680) 0x28, CmdSN 0xb062f5 from world 11097888 to dev <naa ID> failed H:0x0 D:0x2 P:0x0 Valid sense data: 0x3 0x0 0x0.

    Backup job fails for the VM

         Veritas client reports as below:

MMM DD, YYYY, hh:mm:ss - Info bptm (pid=#####) EXITING with status 25 <----------
MMM DD, YYYY, hh:mm:ss - Info <backup_master> (pid==#####)) StorageServer=PureDisk:<backup_master>; Report=PDDO Stats (multi-threaded stream used) for (<backup_master>:volume): scanned: ######### KB, CR sent: ######## KB, CR sent over FC: 0 KB, dedup: ##%, cache disabled, where dedup space saving:##%, compression space saving:##%, new transferred data unencrypted
MMM DD, YYYY, hh:mm:ss - Error bpbrm (pid==#####)) could not send server status message to client
MMM DD, YYYY, hh:mm:ss - Info bpbkar32 (pid==#####)) done. status: 11: system call failed
MMM DD, YYYY, hh:mm:ss - Error nbpem (pid==#####)) backup of client <FQDN of the client> exited with status 11 (system call failed)



Cause

This issue occurs when the ESXi host is unable to read the data from the datastore where the virtual machine running during storage vMotion / backup jobs.

Resolution

This is an expected behavior when the disk has gone bad and returning the medium error (0x3).

 
[0x3] | MEDIUM ERROR 
11/00 | UNRECOVERED READ ERROR
 
The above error codes are sent out by the storage hardware indicating disk errors. To resolve this issue, contact the storage vendor to check and correct the errors on the disk.

For better understanding of SCSI sense codes in VMware environment, please refer Interpreting SCSI sense codes in VMware ESXi


Workaround:
Note: If the storage vendor cannot correct the disk errors, the only workaround is to recreate/restore the virtual machines from the backup.