The virtual machine cannot be powered on in an NFSv4 datastore after recovering from a network outage

Products

• VMware vCenter Server

Issue/Introduction

• The following error is observed when powering on the virtual machine:

          Failed to start the virtual machine (error -18). Cannot open the configuration file /vmfs/volumes/<DATASTORE_NAME>/<VM_NAME>/<VM_NAME>.vmx

• After re-registering the virtual machine, the following error persists:

     vmkernel.log:

     NFS41: NFS41FileOpOpenFile:####: Open of obj 0x############ name <VM_NAME>-flat.vmdk (fhID 0x########) failed: Busy

• Other virtual machines on the same host and datastore are functioning properly.

Environment

VMware ESXi 8.x

Resolution

Restart the ESXi host on which the virtual machine was previously running.

If the issue persists after the above step, contact the storage vendor to investigate further.