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thrusk
Contributor
Contributor

ESXi 6.7 - Failed to power on virtual machine. Insufficient resources.

"More details":

Power On VM

Key: haTask-4-vim.VirtualMachine.powerOn-79278534

Description: Power On this virtual machine

Virtual machine: web3

State: Failed - Insufficient resources.

Errors: Out of resources

I am guessing it is out of disk space somewhere but not quite sure where to check as the 2 existing data stores have about 25+ GB free each!

The VM was working OK the previous day. No configuration changes were made to the erroring VM, however another VM was added which I suspect took up the "resources". Subsequently removed the new VM but the old was still not powering on.

I've searched the forums and around but not found anything related to this specific error.

Any suggestions on how I can get this machine started again?

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GayathriS
Expert
Expert

This message just not indicates resource crunch with datastore but also with respective to memory , CPU etc..

Do you see any warning/message on the summary page of host where this VM's residing , also on VM's summary page ?

This is may be an issue with HA admission control as well.

There are situation that if admission control is enabled It checks for available constraints depending on which it powers on VM's .

Check out this blog for more understanding on this:http://geekswing.com/geek/vmware-cpu-and-ram-reservations-fixing-insufficient-resources-to-satisfy-c...

NOTE:

Are you facing issue only with one host or what happens if you migrate this VM to another host and try to power on ?

Please consider marking this answer as "correct" or "helpful" if you think your questions have been answered.

regards

Gayathri

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thrusk
Contributor
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Thanks for the prompt response GayathriS.

HA is not currently enabled, and no other configuration changes were made to the VM since it was last seen working. No obvious warnings or indications are shown on the summary page (CPU and RAM are nominal). With no other VMs running, this still doesn't power on and produces the error.

Something from the error log may help:

- Swap: 3683: Failed to create swap file '/vmfs/volumes/52d71515-0f264c58-2f2f-38eaa7abfa2e/web3/vmx-web3-2638557098-1.vswp' : Not found

Interestingly I've also noticed I can't make configuration changes either.

- Failed to reconfigure virtual machine web3. Unable to write VMX file: /vmfs/volumes/52d71515-0f264c58-2f2f-38eaa7abfa2e/web3/web3.vmx.

I can see that the VMX file is there (looking via bash and datastore browser).

So again I suspect disk space, but not sure exactly where to check or free it up. There are 2x 1TB datastores both with approx 25 GB free. Specifically, approx 930GB capacity,  905GB provisioned, and 25GB free. Could it be that within the provisioned storage we're out of space?

I can try the suggestion of using another host, however, as last resort as the vmdk's are huge - it should work on the existing host, and did at least recently.

Any further suggestions are welcome!

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GayathriS
Expert
Expert

right click on VM and go to edit settings take a screen shot(which shows how many disk are added)

high light each disks and you should be able to see on which datastore the respective VMDK is stored, this will help you in checking respective datastore available space.

Yes it can be with storage, but you need to check .

On this message : - Swap: 3683: Failed to create swap file '/vmfs/volumes/52d71515-0f264c58-2f2f-38eaa7abfa2e/web3/vmx-web3-2638557098-1.vswp' : Not found

Check if you see vswp file from datastore, if you dont find which means its not getting created.

If it is available but still throwing this message then it is some thing to do with lock/ access

VMware Knowledge Base

Help! - VM stuck resetting

VMware Knowledge Base

regards

Gayathri

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thrusk
Contributor
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Regarding the vswp, I think it's not getting created. There is a ***-2.vswp from a few days ago, but the ***-1.vswp it's trying to create isn't there.

The VM edit screen shows the following key info related to hard disks:

Hard disk 1

80GB

Thick provisioned, lazily zeroed

[datastore3_tb2] web3/web3.vmdk

Hard disk 2

900GB

Thick provisioned, lazily zeroed

[datastore2_tb1] files_a/web1_3.vmdk

Hard disk 3

800GB

Thick provisioned, lazily zeroed

[datastore3_tb2] files_b/web3_2.vmdk

With this provisioning, both datastores still have at least 25GB free.

It has been allocated 8GB RAM out of 16GB on the host.

I've just made web3 the sole VM on that host, with tb2 (on which the main .vmx resides) now having approx. 50GB of space and it still errors.

It still also errors on trying to reconfigure anything (.vmx error on edit > save).

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yolvys
Contributor
Contributor

Hello there,

I had the same issue, Failed - The attempted operation cannot be performed in the current state (Powered off). I try many changes to fix it. but the way how I resolved was unregister the vm then register again, and voila! its back online.

2020-03-25 21_36_47-ORIONESX03 - VMware ESXi.png

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