Veeam Backup Error - Please try to download the specific file using connection to ESX server were vm is registered.

[rdalrymple]

I'm having an issue backing up a few VM's out of the blue.

[*]Details
Getting VM info from vSphere
Error: File does not exist or locked. VMFS path: [[DATASTORE-02] New Virtual Machine/New Virtual Machine.vmx]. Please, try to download specified file using connection to the ESX server where the VM registered. --tr:DiskLib error: [4].A file error was encountered -- File open failed: Failed to lock the file --tr:Failed to start file downloading. VMFS path: [[Unity_AND-02] New Virtual Machine/New Virtual Machine.vmx]. --tr:NFC storage connection is unavailable. Storage: [stg:datastore-21,nfchost:host-355,conn[*]

I contacted veeam and they said to reboot the host which I did and still did not work, then they suggested I contact vmware because of a locked file issue. Vmware noticed that all of my VMs in all of my datastores have a *.lck file and we moved one to a temp directory and backed up and still an error.

I havent been able to backup three machines in over 2 weeks and im slowly regretting moving to veeam, this has been a pain in the a$$. Anyone have any input on errors like this would be great.

Veeam Support Ticket # 05308740

[Andreas Neufert]

The root cause of locked fiels are usually crashes or power loss situations on the ESXi hosts.
The lock files can be on files and folders. You need to remove all of them. See here how to do this.
https://kb.vmware.com/s/article/1003857?lang=en_US
I would continue with VMware to investigate this as well bring the VMware support together with our support to solve this.
If you are not happy with the Veeam support, use the "Contact a manager" button in the Veeam support system and escalate it.

Anyhow if you need urgent backup and it is still not working, please use temporary our agents (managed agents with protection group and agent backup jobs are simple way to do this).
Maybe perform this backup before you start to delete things on the VMware hosts.

[rdalrymple]

I will try this, the strange part of this all is I did a manually backup last night not a scheduled and it worked fine? But tonight ill watch the scheduled and I bet it wont work.

[Andreas Neufert]

Maybe something else is scheduled and work with the VMs in the night?
As well please check VMware login history to see if there is a service or unexpected user action.