RHEL 5.2 convert failed at 1%, failed to poweron vm

[EdOfTheMountai1]

FAILED: A general system error occurred: failed to poweron vm

• My source RHEL 5.2 physical machine is running VMware-converter-4.0.1-161434. 
• Since 4.0.1 is incompatible with ESXi 4.1, I installed VMware vCenter Converter Standalone 4.3 on Vista.
• When running on 4.3 on Vista I specify both the source remote machine and the ESXi destination by IP address.
• The physical machine HD exceeds the available free space on ESXi datastore1 so I changed the destination layout from Flat to Thin which allows me to proceed.

I am spinning my wheels trying to import a physical RHEL 5.2 machine into ESXi 4.1 and have spent days trying to figure this out.  Any clues on troubleshooting is much appreciated.  ESXi looks very useful if I can ever get comfortable with it.  Thanks in advance,

-Ed

[vmroyale]

Hello.

Give the Converter 5.0 BETA a try.

Good Luck!

[EdOfTheMountai1]

Using 5.0.0 beta I still get "failed to poweron vm" at 1% when trying to convert a Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) physicalserver.  I do not think it is an issue with the ESXi free hard disk space as this time I unchecked all but the boot partition and made set to minium size (10Mb)

Any tips on where I can get more information on what the cause of "failed to poweron vm" is?

Thanks,

-Ed

[AndreTheGiant]

Have you tried to untick "power on" VM in converter wizard?

So at least  you can get the  target VM to troubleshoot and it's not been removed after conversion  finished.

[EdOfTheMountai1]

Under the conversion wizard's Advanced options, I see two Post-conversion power state options, and both were already not checked.

• Power on target machine
• Power off source machine

The message "failed to poweron vm at 1%" occurs within a minute of starting the process so I assume this is not a Post-conversion option I am looking for?  Where can I find it?

Thanks for your suggestion,

-Ed

[kjb007]

Do you have admission control enabled in your cluster?

The RHEL conversion process involves a helper vm that is powered on, before any attempt to connect to your physical server is made.

That helper vm is what copies over all of your bits across the wire from your physical server.  If you're failing that early on, then the helper vm is not able to start up.

-KjB

[EdOfTheMountai1]

Thank you very much for your reply.  This sounds hopeful.

>Do you have admission control enabled in your cluster?

I have a single ESXi server and I do not know but expect the answer is no if it is not enabled by default.  Where is the ESXi option to enable admission control?  I have been browsing the options of my ESXi host from vSphere Client and cannot find "admission control".  Is this a feature that is not included in the free ESXi version ?

I have a single ESXi 4.1 server installed.  From the source Linux physical machine I wish to convert I executed the command  /usr/bin/vmware-converter-client.

It then fails within 20 seconds at 1%.

-Ed

[kjb007]

Admission control is for an HA cluster, so that does not appear to be your problem.

I've haven't used the Linux client, specifically, but it sounds like a helper vm is not created properly.  Are you seeing events on the ESXi server indicating a vm was created?

-KjB

[kjb007]

You are installing both client and server portions of converter during the install, correct?

-KjB

[EdOfTheMountai1]

Thanks you for your help.  Not sure, I understand.  Here's what I am doing:

1. From Linux physical machine to convert I run vmware-converter-client
2. On the opening dialog for VMware vCenter Converter Standalone I select the option Connect to a local server
3. Next I select Convert Machine and with option A remote machine selected, I give it the IP of this local machine and credentials
4. On the next screen of the wizard, Specify Destination, I give it the IP and credentials of the ESXi host and press Next then Next again
5. On screen, View/Edit Options, there is a problem with Data to copy because the ESXi host has less free space available than the size of the physical machine's hard drive
6. I press the Edit link for Data to Copy, the the Advanced link, then from the Target Layout tab, I change the 233GB file system from Flat to Thin, then press FInish
7. After about 10 seconds, I get the "Failed at 1%" message

Thanks again for your time,

-Ed

[jsorchik]

I was running into this same issue. For me, it turns out that I was trying to allocate more processors than my ESXi server is licensed for. I had to drop it down to 4 during the Converter configuration. Now it is chugging along nicely. Not sure if this is what your problem could be, but it can't hurt to check. I noticed the problem by looking at the log on the ESX server rather than the Converter logs.

Good luck!

-Josh

[EdOfTheMountai1]

Thank you for the added clues.  My ESXi host has 8 CPU cores.  My target machine had 8.  Yet I get same "failed at 15" when I tried to convert specifying a single CPU.

What is the free ESXi CPU limit?  Is it 6?  Does it mean I can run 6 x 1xCPU-VMs or 1 x 6xCPU VM?  Or is it the max any single VM may have.

-Ed

[handel]

This solved my problem. Lowering the CPU count worked. Thanks.