How to manage Locked files

Open SSH console and run the following:

vmkfstools -D VM1-flat.vmdk

You see output similar to:

Lock [type 10c00001 offset 54009856 v 11, hb offset 3198976
gen 9, mode 0, owner 4655cd8b-3c4a19f2-17bc-00145e808070 mtime 114]
Addr <4, 116, 4>, gen 5, links 1, type reg, flags 0, uid 0, gid 0, mode 600
len 5368709120, nb 0 tbz 0, cow 0, zla 3, bs 1048576

Note: This output from running the vmkfstools which appears on the command line may be incomplete. Always check the output logged to the vmkernel , messages , or vmkernel.log files to see all the output.

Where: 

• The owner 4655cd8b-3c4a19f2-17bc-00145e808070 indicates that the MAC address of the ESXi/ESX host locking the file is 00:14:5E:80:80:70.
  
  Note: If the owner has the entry 00000000-00000000-0000-000000000000 it indicates that the file has either a read-only lock or a multi-writer lock or there is no lock on the file.
  
  
• The mode indicates the type of lock that is on the file. The list of mode locks are:
  
  
• 
  
  • mode 0 = no lock
  • mode 1 = is an exclusive lock (vmx file of a powered on VM, the currently used disk (flat or delta), *vswp, etc.)
  • mode 2 = is a read-only lock (e.g. on the ..-flat.vmdk of a running VM with snapshots)
  • mode 3 = is a multi-writer lock (e.g. used for MSCS clusters disks or FT VMs).