Power on VM, operation failed.

Products

• VMware vCenter Server 8.0
• VMware vCenter Server

Issue/Introduction

Failed to power on VM.

Failed to lock the file.

Failed to start the virtual machine.

Module Disk power on failed.

Cannot open the disk '/vmfs/volumes/ ######-######-######-######/<VM name>/<VM name>.vmdk' or one of the snapshot disks it depends on.

Environment

VMware vCenter Server 8.0.x

Cause

VMDK file is locked by vpxa service. 

To find the name of the process holding the lock, run lsof 'locked_file_name' on the host holding the lock and filter the output for the file name in question:

Example:

 lsof | egrep 'Cartel|<VM name>.vmdk'

Cartel | World name | Type | fd | Description
36## vpxa FILE 24 /vmfs/volumes/<UUID>/<VM name>/<VM name>.vmdk

This shows that the file is locked by a virtual machine having Cartel ID 36##.

Resolution

Connect to the host via SSH and then restart the vpxa service with the following commands:

 /etc/init.d/vpxa restart