Error "unable to access the virtual machine configuration" during ESXi upgrade precheck when using local storage
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Error "unable to access the virtual machine configuration" during ESXi upgrade precheck when using local storage

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Article ID: 430766

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Updated On:

Products

VMware vCenter Server

Issue/Introduction

When performing an ESXi host upgrade or attempting to put a host into Maintenance Mode, the operation fails. The vCenter Server UI displays the following error for VMs residing on the host:

  • "Unable to access the virtual machine configuration"

  • "Unable to access file [DatastoreName] VMname/VMname.vmx"

This occurs specifically when Distributed Resource Scheduler (DRS) or a manual vMotion attempts to evacuate VMs to other hosts in the cluster.

Environment

VMware vSphere ESXi 8.x

Cause

The root cause is the use of local storage for virtual machines in a cluster where vMotion/DRS is required for host evacuation. Standard vMotion (compute-only) requires that the source and destination hosts have concurrent access to the VM's files. Since a local datastore is only accessible to the host it is physically installed in, other hosts in the cluster cannot access the configuration files, causing the migration and the upgrade precheck to fail.

Resolution

To resolve this issue, the VMs must be moved to storage that is accessible by all hosts in the cluster or powered off during the maintenance window.

  1. Right-click the affected Virtual Machine and select Migrate.

  2. Select Change storage only or Change both compute and storage.

  3. Select a Shared Datastore (e.g., vSAN, NFS, or VMFS via iSCSI/FC) that is mounted to all hosts in the cluster.

  4. Complete the wizard and wait for the migration to finish.

  5. Re-run the ESXi upgrade precheck.

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