Unlocking a file

[njcwotx]

This question is more of a generic Linux question, as my problem is actually on Red Hat, but frankly I like this forum and its posters seem knowledable and respond fairly quickly...

This situation:
I am running VMWARE ESX server, its kernel is RED HAT Enterprise. The hardware is 3 HP Blade Servers with a SAN connected to all 3. Everything is working fine. I decided that it might be a good idea to try to sftp some of the vmware instances off the the SAN and put onto a tape offsite somewhere.

I started with a non-critical server thankfully. (there are several critical virtual servers running on the same ESX blade) I must shutdown the vmware session (a.k.a the virtual server) to copy the file, so I shut it down and attempted several times to SCP or SFTP the virtual disk (its just a big 8GB file) off of the SAN through the Red Hat kernel. Well, this copy would not work, it would always fail in the end for some reason. After deciding to bring back up my virtual server to ponder my delemma, I tried to restart my server and now the virtual server wont start because I get an error saying "Device or Resouce in use".

OK, so its obvious that my attempts to sftp the file has produced some kind of issue where the copy failure has locked me out of my file. I am not in a position to reboot the vmware server because the other production servers cant go down. I need to find out how to unlock this file to allow me to start it.

I have looked at lsof and ps -A to see if any processes have the file open, but nothing shows to have it open. How can I tell what is blocking me, or is there any other commands I can use to determine this.

The question:
How can I unlock this file and allow my vmware to open it without rebooting the server.
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[njcwotx]

Well, I tried to recreate the virtual server on another blade, but I still get same error. Problem must reside on the SAN itself. I will just have to schedule one of those late night reboots...
_________________
Drinking from the fountain of knowldege.
Sometimes sipping.
Sometimes gulping.
Always thirsting.