The virtual machine cannot be powered on, or a new virtual machine cannot be created in the NFS datastore

Products

• VMware vSphere ESXi

Issue/Introduction

• The NFS (Network File System) datastore appears to be functioning correctly from the ESXi command line: a file can be created using the touch command, and data can be written to the file using vi.
• The following error is observed in the hostd.log file when attempting to create a new virtual machine on the datastore:

    <YYYY-MM-DD>T<HH:MM:SS> warning hostd[#######] [Originator@#### sub=Libs opID=########-##-##-##-#-#### user=vpxuser:vpxuser] Hostlog_Flush: Failed to open hostlog /vmfs/volumes/########-########/<TEST_VM>/<TEST_VM>-########.hlog for writing: Input/output error

• The following error is observed in the vmkernel.log file:

    NFSLock: ####: Failed to create .lck-################ : I/O error

Environment

• VMware vSphere ESXi 7.0.x
• VMware vSphere ESXi 8.0.x

Resolution

Contact the NFS storage vendor to resolve the issue with the NFS datastore.