Thanks a ton for the reply Matthias. I am little confused here. How to add volume on my esx server using virsh? I did SCP and copied my vmdk image to [datastore1] testNode/cluster.vmdk and also modified my xml file as you suggested. Now when I tried starting the node it gave me an error message saying: "error: Failed to start testNode error: internal error: Could not start domain: GenericVmConfigFault - Failed to start the virtual machine." How to resolve this? Regards, Varun <div class="gmail_quote">On 13 Aug 2013 13:21, "Matthias Bolte" <<a href="mailto:matthias.bolte@googlemail.com">matthias.bolte@googlemail.com</a>> wrote: <blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex"> 2013/8/12 varun bhatnagar <<a href="mailto:varun292006@gmail.com">varun292006@gmail.com</a>>: > Hi, > > Today I was trying to start a node using libvirt on ESX (esxi-5.1) > hypervisor and I got the following error message: > > virsh # define /local/myNode/esxdomain.xml > Domain testNode defined from /local/myNode/esxdomain.xml > virsh # start testNode > error: Failed to start domain testNode > error: internal error: Could not start domain: GenericVmConfigFault - Cannot > open the disk /vmfs/volues/5208f99d-760cf4a2-000c29520788/testNode.vmdk or > one of the snapshot disks it depends on. > > > I checked the datastore of my ESX server and found out that instead of file > one directory is getting created with the name cluster.vmdk and inside it > there are few more files but cluster.vmdk file is not there. > > /vmfs/volumes # cd datastore1 > /vmfs/volues/5208f99d-760cf4a2-000c29520788 # ls > cluster.vmdk > /vmfs/volues/5208f99d-760cf4a2-000c29520788 # cd cluster.vmdk > /vmfs/volues/5208f99d-760cf4a2-000c29520788/cluster.vmdk # ls -ltr > -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 261 Aug 12 17:30 cluster.vmdk > -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 674 Aug 12 17:30 cluster.vmx > -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 0 Aug 12 17:30 cluster.vmsd > /vmfs/volues/5208f99d-760cf4a2-000c29520788/cluster.vmdk # Okay, libvirt should not have created a directory named cluster.vmdk, I think there is a bug, but I can't test it at the moment because my ESX setup is unavailable due to a hardware failure. > Can anyone tell me how to start a node and why I am getting that error > message. > Below is my xml file. > > <domain type='vmware'> > <name>testNode</name> > <uuid>50115e16-9bdc-49d7-f171-53c4d7f91710</uuid> > <memory>1048576</memory> > <currentMemory>1048576</currentMemory> > <vcpu>1</vcpu> > <os> > <type arch='x86_64'>hvm</type> > </os> > <devices> > <disk type='file' device='disk'> > <source file='[datastore1] cluster.vmdk'/> Here is a problem. Typically all files of a virtual machine should be located in a subdirectory named after the virtual machine. But you placed the VMDK file in the datastore root. I think this confused libvirt. This should read <source file='[datastore1] testNode/cluster.vmdk'/> instead. Also "virsh define" cannot create this VMDK file for you if it doesn't exist already, because there is not enough information in the domain XML. You need to do this yourself using "virsh vol-create". I suggest you delete the cluster.vmdk directory from the datastore and start over with the domain XML modified as suggested, but create "[datastore1] testNode/cluster.vmdk" before defining the virtual machine. -- Matthias Bolte <a href="http://photron.blogspot.com" target="_blank">http://photron.blogspot.com</a> </blockquote></div>