While updating several hosts to the latest patch level I encountered an error on one of the hosts:

The locker folder on an ESXi host contains the VMware Tools images and is also used as a temporary storage location. A quick look at the folder (through SSH) showed some weird-looking files and folders. So apparently the folder is corrupt.

The solution is not very difficult and can be done without downtime.

• Start a session to another (working) host through SCP and copy the contents of the locker folder to your computer. You can find this folder at the root of your host.
• Start a session to your problem host using SSH and run the following commands.
• ls -ltrh | grep store. You should see something like this:

• You can see that locker is a symbolic link to store and store is a link to an actual partition. Make a note of the link store is pointing at (/vmfs/volumes/604b5db0-2c375d97-1cee-7845c492650e).
• Now lets see what underlying partition is used by running vmkfstools -P /vmfs/volumes/604b5db0-2c375d97-1cee-7845c492650e. You should see something like this:

• Make a note of the underlying partition (mpx.vmhba32:C0:T0:L0:8).
• Now format the partition to create a new file system by running vmkfstools -C vfat /dev/disks/mpx.vmhba32:C0:T0:L0:8.
• Make a note of the new volume (Successfully created new volume: <new volume>).
• Now recreate the link by running ln -snf /vmfs/volumes/<new volume> /store.
• Finally, start a session through SCP and copy the saved contents to the newly created folder.

If all goes well you should now be able to re-check your compliance and remediate the host.