After adding a shared disk to one of the clustered VM we are unable to power it on with error 'Failed to lock the file'

Products

• VMware vCenter Server

Issue/Introduction

Symptoms:

• After re-adding shared disks to the secondary VM, powering on the VM gives the below error: "Failed to lock the file: Cannot open the disk '/vmfs/volumes/<vm file path>.vmdk' or one of the snapshot disks it depends on".

• The vmware.log for the VM has the below errors:

Environment

VMware vSphere 7.x

VMware vSphere 8.x

Cause

Since the disks used with the VMs are shared disks, the sharing and disk mode configuration has to be set to 'Multi-Writer' and 'Independent-Persistent'.

If the configuration has been set to 'unspecified' or 'no sharing' the VM will not be able to lock the vmdk and hence unable to power on.

Resolution

Correct the VM configuration for the hard disk by changing the sharing to 'multi-writer' and the disk mode to 'Independent-Persistent'.

Post update, the VM will power on normally.