Unable to launch console for the virtual machines

Products

• VMware vSphere ESXi

Issue/Introduction

Symptoms:

Virtual machines may show powered on and running. But when launching the console, it shows blank.

ESXi hosts hosting these virtual machines may show connectivity issues (Not responding) with the vCenter server.

Environment

VMware vSphere ESXi 8.x

Cause

The issue is seen when there are underlying storage issues. The storage devices experiencing READ/WRITE or I/O errors can cause the accessibility issues.

When checking logs /var/run/log/vmkernel.log on ESXi host, you may see the events for unable to read the partition table as below.

2025-04-03T03:33:57.021Z Wa(180) vmkwarning: cpu57:31721004)WARNING: Partition: 1387: Partition table read from device naa.600a098####################f6155 failed: I/O error.

Also, when querying the partition table for the LUNs where these VMs running, it may return result as Unknown. This indicates storage connectivity issues.

[root@ESXi:/vmfs/volumes/640f409d-bb774b5b-80ba-####/log] partedUtil getptbl /vmfs/devices/disks/naa.600a098####################f6155
unknown                    ---------------> Unknown Partition.
1336746 255 63 21474836480

Resolution

This needs investigation from Storage Engineer to check on the connectivity and performance issues from Storage.

Please engage storage engineer or vendor to check and address the issue.

Once the issue from storage resolved, you can perform a rescan for the storage on ESXi hosts to see if the VMs accessibility and consoles are working as expected.

Refer: Troubleshooting LUN connectivity issues on ESXi hosts