Virtual machine running but show zero KBs on virtual hard drives in vCenter UI

Products

• VMware vCenter Server

Issue/Introduction

Virtual Machines are showing 0 KBs for the attached virtual disks.

This is limited to a few machines.  If you are seeing this on all the machines in a cluster take a look at article VMDK size and properties of the VM show blank on vCenter server instead.

Cause

VM configuration got corrupted and the VM data is not reporting properly.

Resolution

1. Access the datastore the VM is residing on and navigate to the folder containing the VM files, and verify they VMDK files are not showing 0 bytes in size for the data file of the VMDK.
2. Create a temporary VM and attach the VMDK to it to confirm it reports the correct size.  If so, then remove the disks from the VM and delete that temporary VM.
3. After confirming the disks are good gracefully shut down the VM, and remove it from inventory of the vCenter.
4. Navigate back to the datastore and the VM files, locate the VMX file, and register it back with vCenter

At this point the VM should be reporting the disks with the correct size.