VM Power-On Fails with "another task is in progress" due to Stale CBT Files

Products

• VMware vSphere ESXi

Issue/Introduction

A virtual machine power-on task hangs at 33% and fails with the user interface error: "failed, another task is in progress". A virtual machine consolidation status alert is simultaneously active. The virtual machine's vmware.log reports the VMX process terminating after failing to initialize disks with the following errors: DISKLIB-CTK: Could not open change tracking file "<REDACTED_FILE_PATH>/<REDACTED_HOSTNAME>-ctk.vmdk": Change tracking invalid or disk in use. OBJLIB-FILEBE: Error creating file '<REDACTED_FILE_PATH>/<REDACTED_HOSTNAME>-ctk.vmdk': 3 (The file already exists). Caught signal 15

Environment

VMware vSphere ESXi  8.0.x
VMware vCenter Server 8.0.x

Cause

Stale or corrupted Changed Block Tracking (CBT) files (-ctk.vmdk) from a previous snapshot or backup failure prevent the ESXi host from acquiring exclusive storage locks to initialize the virtual disks.

Resolution

 

1. Establish an SSH session to the ESXi host where the affected virtual machine is registered.

2. Verify that no active third-party backup appliance is holding a lock on the base disk: vmfsfilelockinfo -p /vmfs/volumes/<DATASTORE_NAME>/<REDACTED_HOSTNAME>/<REDACTED_HOSTNAME>-flat.vmdk

3. Navigate to the virtual machine's datastore directory.

4. Create a temporary folder and move the conflicting change tracking files out of the working path: mkdir temp mv *-ctk.vmdk temp

5. Create a backup of the virtual machine's configuration file, then edit the .vmx file to temporarily disable CBT. Change the following entry for all attached disks: ctkEnabled = "FALSE"

6. Identify the virtual machine's VMID: vim-cmd vmsvc/getallvms

7. Reload the virtual machine configuration to ensure the hostd agent registers the .vmx changes: vim-cmd vmsvc/reload <VMID>

8. Power on the virtual machine via the vSphere Client.

 

Additional Information

VM power on fails at 73% with error "Change tracking invalid or disk in use"

VM consolidation failed with the error "failed, another task is in progress"