Cannot start Virtual Machine on ESXi 6.5

As described by JC-LAN, I had a lot of trouble with one particular "special" VMDK on a ESXi 6.5 system, which did not start after a reboot of the ESXi host.

The power-on failed with "File system specific implementation of LookupAndOpen[...] failed" - however in the end it just gave me the overall error that it failed to start the machine. As it turned out, the VMDK was corrupted.

1.) Enable SSH on the ESXi host with the corrupted VMDK - and login

2.) Check the main VMDK (not with the name -s####.vmdk, the main file!) with

vmkfstools -x check /absolute/path/vm.vmdk

3.) It will probably report that the fail is defective. Repair with

vmkfstools -x repair /absolute/path/vm.vmdk

4.) Now you can try to start the VM again, helped me already 3 times 🙂

Taken from: https://jc-lan.tk/2017/02/01/esxi-6-5-host-crash-then-guest-fails-to-power-on/

10 thoughts on “Cannot start Virtual Machine on ESXi 6.5

  1. In my case, someone started a "rsync" of the VM inside the vmware shell:

    [root@esxi2:~] lsof |grep -i macvm
    68758 rsync FILE 1 MacVM/.MacVM_0-flat.vmdk.XmExPN
    68756 rsync FILE 3 MacVM/MacVM_0-flat.vmdk

    After killing the rsync process the VM was able to start, and I scolded the person for not using proper tools to copy the VM lol

  2. Not working for me unfortunately, the issue started with a snapshot failing to save...

    DiskLib_Check() failed for source disk 'redacted.vmdk': Input/output error (327689).

    The problematic vmdk file is the only one affected by this - for others, even of the same VM, checking works fine (and repairing is unnecessary). Problably completely messed up, that one?

  3. Thats sadly a possibility. You could try to copy the vmdk from your datastore and try to mount it elsewhere to at least save some of the files. Best of luck!

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