Hi all,
Just spent a few hours trawling the internet trying to find out why I can't get my virtual machines to auto-start. Eventually cracked it for myself after reading through log files. Once I found the solution, searched again on the internet, and lo and behold, the solution is listed on Dave M's vm-help.com site as a common issue.
Anyway, in the off chance that this post will appear in someone else's search (hence the repeated use of keywords), here's the deal:
On ESXi, virtual machines won't auto-start, even if you have gone to the Virtual Machine startup/shutdown pane of the VI Client and moved the machines up or down to the "Automatic Startup" or "Any order" sections, if you are running a standalone ESXi host (i.e. not vCenter) and you have "Lockdown Mode" enabled.
That's all.
Nathaniel
