Troubleshooting "Deferring power op completion until VM is at a stable state"

Products

• VMware vSphere ESX 8.x

Issue/Introduction

When attempting to power on a virtual machine (VM), the operation fails, and the following error is logged in the hostd.log:

Deferring power op completion until VM is at a stable state

This behavior is frequently observed following migration operations (vMotion, Storage vMotion), Zerto replication failovers, or after an interrupted background task. The VM remains powered off and cannot be started through the vCenter UI.

Environment

vSphere ESX 

Cause

This error indicates that the ESXi host, where the VM is registered, cannot establish a reliable state for the VM. This is typically caused by:

• Stale File Locks: .lck files remaining in the VM's directory on the datastore, which the host interprets as the VM being active or locked by another process.
• Hung Background Tasks: Incomplete operations (e.g., pending disk consolidation, snapshot removal, or Zerto cleanup tasks) that remain registered in the vCenter task queue.
• Invalid Power State: The vCenter server has a discrepancy between its recorded power state for the VM and the actual state reported by the ESXi host.

Resolution

 1. Verify and Clear Stale File Locks

1. SSH into the ESXi host where the VM is currently registered.
2. Navigate to the VM's directory on the datastore: cd /vmfs/volumes/<datastore_name>/<vm_name>
3. List the files in the directory to identify any .lck files: ls -lat *.lck
4. If .lck files exist, investigate which host or process might be holding them. If you are certain the VM is powered off and not running on any host, remove the lock files: rm *.lck

2. Clear Hung Tasks in Zerto/vCenter

• Zerto: If the VM was replicated via Zerto, check the Zerto Virtual Manager (ZVM) for any pending tasks (e.g., "Cleanup," "Commit," or "Failover") that may be stalled. Complete or force-cancel the task from the Zerto interface.
• vCenter: Review the Recent Tasks pane in the vCenter Web Client. If you see stalled tasks like "Consolidate disks" or "Relocate," attempt to cancel them. If they cannot be cancelled, you may need to restart the vpxd service on the vCenter Server.

3. Re-register the VM

If the error persists after clearing locks and tasks, re-registering the VM configuration can clear stale state information:

1. Right-click the VM in the vCenter inventory and select Remove from Inventory. (Important: Do not select "Delete from disk").
2. Browse the datastore to the VM's directory.
3. Locate the .vmx file, right-click it, and select Register VM.
4. Once registered, attempt to power on the VM again.

Additional Information

https://knowledge.broadcom.com/external/article/404366/vms-powered-off-with-error-ltvm-namegt-c.html