Troubleshooting a non-responsive virtual machine

Vmware Troubleshooting

Symptoms

o The virtual machine stops responding and cannot be controlled.

o The virtual machine experiences a core dump

o The virtual machine suffers from performance problems

o The virtual machine experiences network connectivity issues

o Any task done shows "In Progress" in Virtual Infrastructure tasks and never completes

You receive the following error:
Not enough resources to Power On the virtual machine

Resolution
Please validate that each troubleshooting step below is true for your environment. Each step will provide instructions or a link to a document, in order to eliminate possible causes and take corrective action as necessary. The steps are ordered in the most appropriate sequence to isolate the issue and identify the proper resolution.

Please do not skip a step.

Step-1.

Verify that the virtual machine is not in an unresponsive state.

In a non-responsive system, the operating system seems to be paralyzed, no error messages are displayed, and the screen freezes or the application does not respond to users' actions. Keyboard input or mouse clicking has no effect, regardless of where the cursor is placed, but the operating system is still running. Unlike a failure, sometimes a non-responsive system resolves itself, and the application resumes its normal execution without your involvement.

A failure is a situation where the operating system has terminated and is no longer running. There may be a purple diagnostics screen or error message visible in it's place.
Note: There is a difference between a virtual machine failing and the guest operating system failing. If the virtual machine fails, it powers off and vmware-core files are created in the virtual machines host directory. In the vmware.log file, you may see an entry similar to:

Sep 00 00:00:00: vcpu-1| MONITOR PANIC: ASSERT failed
Sep 00 00:00:00: vcpu-1| Core dump with build build-10104
Sep 00 00:00:00: vcpu-1| Writing monitor corefile

"/root/vmware/vm1/vmware-core0.gz"
In some cases VirtualCenter and the ESX hosts get into a state where they are not reporting a virtual machines state properly


You must restart the VirtualCenter and ESX host service.
To restart the services:

A. On the ESX host, run the following commands:

# service vmware-vpxa stop to stop the vxpa agent.
# service mgmt-vmware stop to stop the management services.
# service xinetd restart to restart xinetd.
# service mgmt-vmware start to start the management services.

Note: At this stage, the VMware Virtual Infrastructure Client sessions to both the ESX host and the VMware VirtualCenter server are terminated.

B.Connect to the VMware Virtual Center server via the console or an RDP session. Restart the VMware VirtualCenter Server service.

To restart the VirtualCenter Server service:
1. Click Start > Run > services.msc .
2. Locate the VMware VirtualCenter Server service.
3. Restart the service.

C.On the ESX host run the following command:

# service vmware-vpxa start

D. Open a VMware Virtual Infrastructure Client session to the VMware VirtualCenter Server and power on the virtual machine.
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STEP-2.Ensure you do not have missing or locked files.

Often, you receive the following error when there are missing or locked files:
Error:"unable to locate vm swap file. failed to power on vm"

For more details read the following article:

http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=10051

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Step-3 Ensure you have enough resources available to run your virtual machine.

Resolution
To verify the virtual machine is configured with enough resources:

1. Connect to the ESX Server host directly using VMware Infrastructure Client (VI Client).
2.Log in as a user with administrator privileges.
3.Right-click the virtual machine from the Inventory panel and click Edit settings.
4.Click the Resources tab.
5.Check if the Memory and CPU reservations are set correctly.
6.Click OK to save changes and try Powering On the virtual machine.

If the virtual machine is part of a Cluster and Resource Pool configuration:

1.Connect to the ESX Server host directly using VI Client.
2.Log in as user with administrator privileges.
3.Right-click on the Resource Pool where the virtual machine is and click Edit settings.
4.Check if both CPU Resources and Memory Resources are set to the appropriate level to accommodate all the virtual machines.


All these three steps will resolve you problem