VM Consolidation Failed with the Error "Failed to copy disk: Busy"

Products

• VMware vSphere ESX 8.x

Issue/Introduction

Symptoms:

• Snapshot consolidation fails with below error in vCenter GUI:

Failed to copy source (/vmfs/volumes/<VMDatastore>/<VMName>/VMName-000001.vmdk) to destination (/vmfs/volumes/<VMDatastore>/<VMName>/VMName.vmdk):Busy.

Failed to get copy progress while consolidating disks from '/vmfs/volumes/<VMDatastore>/<VMName>/VMName-000001.vmdk' to '/vmfs/volumes/<VMDatastore>/<VMName>/VMName.vmdk'

• Virtual machine vmware.log shows the change tracking error:

YYYY-MM-DDTHH:MM:SS| vcpu-0| I125: DISKLIB-CTK   : Could not open change tracking file "/vmfs/volumes/<VMDatastore>/VMName-ctk.vmdk": Change tracking invalid or disk in use.
YYYY-MM-DDTHH:MM:SS| vcpu-0| I125: DISKLIB-CTK   : Change tracking invalid; reinitializing.
YYYY-MM-DDTHH:MM:SS| vcpu-0| I125: OBJLIB-FILEBE : Error creating file '/vmfs/volumes/<VMDatastore>/VMName-ctk.vmdk': 3 (The file already exists).

• Third party backup vendor does not perform backup for the virtual machine in question anymore.

Environment

VMware vSphere ESXi 8.0

Cause

Stale change tracking files block the snapshot consolidation.

Resolution

Disable CBT(Changed Block Tracking) as per steps of KB below

https://knowledge.broadcom.com/external/article?articleNumber=315370