Unable to create VMs from Template

Products

• VMware vCenter Server

Issue/Introduction

On deploying a new VM, the deployment fails.  The VC may post a error message window with the following:

Operation failed!
Task Name: Appy Storage DRS recommendations
Target: <this may show the destination datastore name>
Status: Could not complete network copy for file

In the VC recent tasks, you may see a message similar to, "Could not complete network copy for file /vmfs/volumes/56124587-####-####-####-############/Win11-Template.vmdk"

Environment

VMware vSphere ESXi (All Versions)

This can be encountered in a variety of VMFS datastore platforms, like fiber channel, iSCSI, etc.  

Cause

You may see in the logs a reference to a corrupted datastore.

[type 1] clusterNum: 18485 invalid inUseResources: 559 rcMeta inUseResources: 511[type] 1] clusterNum: 18485 invalid inUseResources: 559 rcMeta inUseResources: 5112025-02-19T19:25:05.935Z cpu76:15252844)WARNING: Res3: 7066: Volume 67696a0d-####-####-####-############ ("datastore") might be damaged on the disk. Resource cluster metadata corruption has been detected.
2025-02-19T19:25:05.935Z cpu76:15252844)WARNING: FS3: 608: VMFS volume datastore/67696a0d-####-####-####-############ on naa.################################:1 has been detected corrupted

 

Resolution

If the source of the corruption is not found or to start with a verified clean datastore, create a new LUN to replace the corrupted LUN.  To repair the existing LUN, you can use VOMA to attempt to repair the LUN.

Using vSphere On-disk Metadata Analyzer (VOMA) to check VMFS metadata consistency