Failed to Find a Host for Powering on VM

[Intex]

I receive an error message "Failed to find a host for powering on the virtual machine." when attempting to power on a VM.

This is in a test environment with two ESX servers. Available memory on both hosts is only around 120MB, but it's more than enough to power on a 4MB DOS VM :). The ESX hosts are in a cluster with both HA and DRS enabled.

Initially I thought it may be something to do with the automation level and it couldn't decide where to put the VM as both hosts were low on resources. I set this to 'Manual' but that didn't make any difference. If I disable DRS, I can power on the VM. There aren't any resource pools defined. If I enable DRS, power off the VM and then on again, I get the message, so it would appear as though it's related to DRS.

Any ideas?

[kjb007]

Usually, this type of issue results from HA stating it does not have enough resources. If you disable HA, can you power on the VM? How many vm's do you have on the two hosts, and how much memory do you have total?

Read this thread: http://communities.vmware.com/message/939731 . It explains in detail what could be wrong, but the main point is to make a modification to a setting in your HA config.

It may also be related to name resolution, check to make sure DNS is working ok, and you can resolve the short and fully qualified names of your hosts.

-KjB

[Intex]

Thx. I'll try that and report back findings.

[jjgunn]

For me this was as simple as a VM Administrator setting the CPU reservation on a single VM to 137789 MHz.

We have a total of 155000 MHz in the entire cluster :smileyblush:

Once I set the VM back to a reservation of ZERO (0) which is default, the VM powered on successfully.

[Nauset]

I had this issue after shutting down a VM. I got it back up by removing it from inventory and then adding it back. Then it booted right up.

[Anfernee86]

I had the same issue.....turns out CD Drive was tied to Host Device.

[Anfernee86]

Got it on another one. I got this one to start up by going to Edit Settings --> Resources --> changed CPU and Memory Shares to Low. It started back up and changed it back to default Normal.