Quick answer: On ESXi, identify the locked file, datastore type and lock owner before changing a VMware .lck file or stopping a process. VMFS uses metadata locks rather than .lck files; NFS requires a different workflow. A lock can belong to a running VM or a backup proxy. Use the VMFS vmfsfilelockinfo workflow or the … Explore: VMware .lck Files and ESXi VM Locks: Find…
A purple screen on an ESXi host creates an immediate operational problem, but the bigger risk is what happens next. The first reaction is usually to get the host back online. That is understandable, especially when workloads are down, HA is recovering virtual machines, or a cluster is running hot after losing capacity. But if … Explore: ESXi PSOD Triage: Turning a Purple Screen into…
There are storage incidents where the host looks half-recovered. The fabric switch is back online. The link light is good. The array port is healthy. Some paths may even show up again. But inside ESXi, the storage view still does not match reality. A datastore has fewer paths than expected. An RDM-backed workload is not … Explore: When Fibre Channel Paths Lie: A Safe Fabric…
VLAN issues in VMware environments are rarely caused by one mysterious setting. More often, they come from a translation problem. The network team thinks in terms of access ports, trunks, allowed VLAN lists, native VLANs, port channels, and upstream gateways. The virtualization team thinks in terms of vSwitches, distributed port groups, VMkernel adapters, VM network … Explore: VLAN Design Translation for VMware: Physical Trunks, Port…
A vSphere Distributed Switch upgrade can look deceptively simple in the vCenter UI. Select the switch, choose the target version, confirm the warning, and move on. That is not how it should be treated in a brownfield environment. The risk is not that a DVS upgrade is always dangerous. The risk is that old distributed … Explore: DVS Upgrade Guardrails: What Can Break When Old…
Virtual machine network problems rarely arrive with a clean label. The ticket usually says something like “the VM is unreachable,” “the application cannot connect,” “ping fails,” “internet access is down,” or “VMs on different hosts cannot talk.” The underlying cause might be inside the guest OS, on the VM’s virtual NIC, in the port group, … Explore: VM Network Troubleshooting from Guest OS to Uplink:…
Storage failures in vSphere are rarely just “storage is down.” That phrase may be accurate from the application owner’s point of view, but it is not precise enough for the operator who has to decide what happens next. A host that has lost all paths to a datastore behaves differently from a host that has … Explore: PDL vs APD: The Storage Failure Model Every…
Large VM migrations usually fail at the worst possible time: late in the change window, after the task has already consumed hours of storage, network, and operator attention. When the error is something like “Invalid configuration for device ‘##’,” the first instinct is to look for a broken virtual NIC, a missing port group, an … Explore: Why Large VM vMotion and Clone Tasks Fail:…
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