Virtual Machine (VM) is Unresponsive and Unable to Perform Power Operations

Products

• VMware vCenter Server

Issue/Introduction

• Virtual machine is unresponsive in the UI 
• Shows as powered on, however when we launch web console see a loading page that never loads 
• Actioning any new tasks such as a power off will fail 
• When checking for VM logs, may find VM files are not in expected location on datastore. 
• You may find the whole VM directory to be in another sub-directory like below 

Expected: vmfs/volumes/####################/ExampleVM/

Found in: vmfs/volumes/####################/ISO/ExampleVM/

In the vmware.log of affected VM may see similar error to below : 

An error occurred while opening configuration file "/vmfs/volumes/####################/ExampleVM/ExampleVM.vmx": Could
not find the file.

Environment

VMware vCenter Server

VMware ESXi

Cause

The Virtual Machine directory has moved to a different location and as a result, the .vmx file is unreachable to allow for tasks to be implemented.

Resolution

Move the VM files/directory back to the expected/required location as outlined in the error. Once files in correct location, tasks such as power off, vMotion succeed and VM is responsive.