Quick fix: VMware. Some of the disks of the virtual machine failed to load.

I have faced an issue with one of the VMs running on VMware ESXi, 7.0.3, 20328353.

Symptoms:

1. VM is running. There are no reports from users;

2. vMotion fails with an error:

The object or item referred to could not be found.

3. After vMotion in hostd.log we can find the following:

Failed to find file size for /vmfs/volumes/.../VM_NAME.nvram: No such file or directory

4. In the vCenter UI under VM a message is displaying:

Some of the disks of the virtual machine VM_NAME failed to load. The information present for them in the virtual machine configuration may be incomple

5. No issues with the storage layer. All VM’s files are located on the datastore;

6. Other VMs on the host and datastore works fine;

7. Recommendations like “Rescan Datastore” don’t work.

Solution.

Before you begin, make sure that you have a backup.

The solution for me was simple, but it required downtime:

1. Power off the VM;
2. After that, the VM will be in an inaccessible state;
3. Remove VM from the vCenter inventory;
4. Locate VM’s files on the datastore and find vmx file;
5. Register VM;
6. Power on the VM.

After that VM should be up and running without issues.