Unable to access file since it is locked | Veeam

Environment

• VMware ESX4 
• Veeam Backup and Replication 5.x

Content
Had warning results from Veeam but manually removing the snapshot not work:

Removing snapshot
RemoveSnapshot failed, snapshotRef "576-snapshot-6512", timeout "3600000"
Unable to access file since it is locked
Veeam Backup will attempt to remove snapshot during the next job cycle, but you may consider removing snapshot manually.
Possible causes for snapshot removal failure:
- Network connectivity issue, or vCenter Server is too busy to serve the request
- ESX host was unable to process snapshot removal request in a timely manner
- Snapshot was already removed by another application

Needed to restart Management Agents on the VMware Host first:

# service mgmt-vmware restart
Stopping VMware ESX Management services:
VMware ESX Host Agent Watchdog [ OK ]
VMware ESX Host Agent [ OK ]
Starting VMware ESX Management services:
VMware ESX Host Agent (background) [ OK ]
Availability report startup (background) [ OK ]

# service vmware-vpxa restart
Stopping vmware-vpxa: [ OK ]
Starting vmware-vpxa: [ OK ]

Then, went to create a Snapshot manually. This case was 2TB virtual machine:

Time required: Around 5 minutes

Last, deleting All Snapshots:

Time required:  Around 105 minutes

References
VMware “Unable to access file since it is locked” when removing snapshot | Rob van Hamersveld.nl

Restarting the Management agents in ESXi (1003490) | VMware

How to restart the Management agents on a VMware vSphere ESXi or ESX host | VMware

Investigating virtual machine file locks on ESXi (10051) | VMware

KB1213 Unable to access file [unspecified filename] since it is locked | Veeam



Service mgmt-vmware restart may not restart hostd in ESX/ESXi (1005566) | VMware

Unable to delete the virtual machine snapshots (2017072) | VMware



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