Insufficient resources to satisfy configured failover level for vSphere HA

[kcostello]

I have two ESXi 5.1 host in a cluster.  I just installed a virtual appliance and when I try to start if I get an error saying "Insufficient resources to satisfy configured failover level for vSphere HA."  Bot hosts are very low on resources and if I shut down a couple of other VMs I get the the error.  What could be the issue?

[vmroyale]

Note: Discussion successfully moved from VMware vCenter™ to Availability: HA & FT

vSphere HA Admission Control is responsible for this. Check your HA properties in the cluster and see which Admission Control Policy is being used.

[jdptechnc]

What HA Admission Control policy are you using on your Cluster?

Do your VM's and/or the appliance have CPU and/or memory reservation set?

[depping]

There probably is a reservation set on one of your virtual machine's which skews the outcome of the algorythm used by Admission Control. I have written a dozen articles on this topic. First I would suggest to check for reservations, you can do this very simply by using an awesome tools like RVTools (http://www.robware.net/)

Second, I would suggest reading some of the following blog posts:

http://www.yellow-bricks.com/vmware-high-availability-deepdiv/#HA-admission

http://www.yellow-bricks.com/2012/12/04/insufficient-resources-to-satisfy-ha-failover-level-on-clust...

Or just do a search on my blog:

http://www.yellow-bricks.com/?s=admission%20control