unable to boot up virtual servers

[dibekem]

Hi Guys.

 

We have a Dell Poweredge R430 Server with VMware ESXi 6.0 installedWe are unable to manage or boot the host. Virtual machine is marked as inaccessible therefore we cannot powered them on

The vmx file cannot be found.

We cannot boot the virtual servers.The server is not in maintenance mode

 

Any help would be much appreciated.

[MS2011]

Are you managing VM'S through Vicenter ? Can you ping the host?

[dibekem]

we are accessing the host via vSphere Client and we can ping the host okay.

 

under the host where our 2 virtual servers are located it says that the volumes (....vmx) are inaccessible

[Norphy]

Can you browse the host's datastores? Can you see the VMX and VMDK files?

[Roberto]

This does sound like a storage issue. How is that handled? Could some part of that chain of components have dropped offline?

[Davit2005]

As others have said sounds like storage, can you detail how the hosts are setup i.e. local storage, shared storage??

 

If you can log into the host cli you should be able to browse to vmfs/volumes and check that the correct storage are available. You should be able to browse and see the vmx file.

 

The other alternative could be to recreate the VM using the existing disks if you are comfortable to do that and if you can see the existing vmdk's.

 

Were any firmware or and ESXi updates/upgrades done on the host prior to having this issue??

Edited July 14, 2017 by Davit2005

[dibekem]

Morning.

 

I tried to recreate the vm but creating a new under the existing host and browse to the vmx file which seemed to have worked but then I could not boot the vm. It said that the swap file is too big or something. Im on my way back to the school now. Thank god the dhcp and dns servers are not on this host! But no data available to the school yet. [emoji85]

[dibekem]

There are 3 hot swappable drives are installed in this server. All reporting to be okay. On the host at the hardware have all green ticks. I haven't set up this server and this is my first virtual server.

[dibekem]

I can see the existing vmx and vmdk files yes.

[rrrrr]

Have you checked there is enough free disk space both on the host and vm's?

If the disk space is maxed out it would stop them from booting

[SpaceInvader83]

Also check the tmp directory isn't full. I had an offending driver that would fill the tmp directory with a log file.

[Norphy]

Has the VM been snapshotted? The differencing disks will eat up all available space on the volume until the snapshots have been consolidated. That's worth looking at too.

 

Do you get any errors when the VM starts? What are they?

[pooley]

Out of storage space on the host drive?

[dibekem]

Hi.

 

can browse to the data store and read the data. I think yes it is full. Im trying to expand the existing datastore but have no luck yet.

 

There is an option to download and upload to the datastore so im going to download one of the server so that I can delete it and perhaps boot the other.

 

I have taken some snaphoots of the datastore. see attachments

 

thanks everyone so far:)

[Roberto]

I think the runaway .vswp file is your problem. You might want to see if https://community.spiceworks.com/topic/1410685-vmware-vswp-files-and-datastore-disk-space-capacity helps.

[dibekem]

Thanks everyone the replies. Still not working but as the school needs to move on i had to put in some temporary measures which took time. Will try again on Monday.

[steveJCUK]

Have you upgraded by chance the VMware hardware version?

[dibekem]

No I haven't upgraded.

 

I think we had a power cut or something as the servers power went off.

 

I was not here and by time I arrived both servers under the host was showing the following.

 

See attachment

[steveJCUK]

Have a look at the vm settings and see what it's doing with the swap file.

Is it being stored with the vm or on your storage??

[steveJCUK]

Can you vmotion something out of the storage server 2 is using to give it some breathing space.

The swap file can be reduce by shutting down the vm and powering back up again. Do that a couple of times normally helps.

 

I never store mine with vm's.

 

Don't suppose you got a look at the physical host screen when you came in did you? Anything odd with it??

 

Also we're any other machines throubled?

[dibekem]

the swap file is being stored with the vm.

 

I tried to move off stuff like logs and managed to have around 5gb free space but I cannot move any of the 'bigger' files.

I'm using the datacentre download feature.

 

Basically these 2 servers were for the users profiles and documents and also for shares.

 

When the problem started users could not access their data.

[steveJCUK]

That's to be expected behaviour.

How much free space is left on the lun of the machine , this also being the place where the machine is storing its swap file..

I was in a similar position a little while ago.

[dibekem]

4.29GB left on the data store, and that is where everything is stored.

 

I cant do anything on either of the servers, I read about reserving memory so that the swap file can be smaller but when I click on either of the vm's its just shows zeros.

 

The server has another slot for a hard drive.

 

If I add that drive to the data store would that solve the problem?

 

I guess I have to reboot the server and added to the existing raid or create a single raid0 drive?

 

Thanks

[steveJCUK]

Are the disks thick or thin provisioned?

 

- - - Updated - - -

 

Are there any machines which are not critical you can power off?

Have you any other boxes which are acting as esxi hosts?

 

- - - Updated - - -

 

Do any of your vm machines have snap shots?

[dibekem]

I don't know as I didn't setup this server. This is the only server that has this 2 vm installed on. unfortunately no snap are available, all greyed out.