Demo config -> Nested ESXi -> Problem booting VMs -> Failed to create swap file

[oivinde]

Hi,

I'm configuring a vSAN on three nested ESXi's to get some hands on due to the lack of required hardware 😉

vSAN is configured OK, have create a VM Storage Policy and I can create files and virtual machines on the default "vsanDatastore".

But, I cannot boot the VM's, or do _live_ migration from other datastores to the vSAN datastore. When trying to boot a vm, I get ""Failed to create swap file" : Bad parameter"

Anyone experienced something similar?

And yes, I'm well aware that this setup is in no way supported 😉

br

Oivind

[CHogan]

Sounds like a lack of space on the VSAN datastore.

From the description, it sounds like you can do a cold migration, but you cannot power up the VM afterwards?

How much space do you have available, and how much memory does the VM have?

Also, what is the policy setting? This is directly related to how much space is consumed on the VSAN datastore.

[oivinde]

Well, that was my first hunch too, but...

The config is as follows:

Each host has a 20GB SSD and a 40GB Non-SSD. That leaves about 115GB usable seen from the datastore perspective.

The vm is a small Linux machine with 2GB vRAM and a 16GB disk (to keep machine within the capacity of a single host, was the idea)

VM Storage Policy is simply tolerate 1 failure (had the problem before I created this policy).

But, to be sure, I just added +1 100GB Non-SSD to each host, and aggregated capacity is now just north of 410GB for the vsanDatastore.

I even deleted the 16GB virtual disk from the vm, just to see if I could boot it, but still same error:

---

Failed to create swap file '/vmfs/volumes/vsan:52f78bb4a6bab9a9-ffd07d53be01c757/99915f53-d7d9-ee05-d6cc-005056ba7e46/vSAN-Demo2-2ddc8a6e.vswp' : Bad parameter

An error was received from the ESX host while powering on VM vSAN-Demo2.

Failed to start the virtual machine.

Failed to power on VM.

Could not power on VM : Bad parameter.

---

VM´s log file doesn´t give any more clues (to me at least) other than "Bad parameter".

This is the only machine on this datastore.

So, I really don´t see free space as an issue.

Some more things I noticed:

I created a folder named TEST on the datastore. No problem. But, I´m not allowed to delete it again. Just throws a: Cannot delete file [vsanDatastore] TEST

Tried deleting one of the log files in the vm folder, that worked just fine.

Should I just wipe it all and start from scratch again (no a big problem)? Still, I´m curious to what causes this issue! 🙂

br

Oivind

[CHogan]

I only saw it when there were underlying infrastructure problems such as a failed disk. However the errors I got were slightly different:

Failed to create swap file '/vmfs/volumes/vsan:xxxxx: Failure

This might be due to the fact that you are nested, and I am on physical.

I was able to power up the VM only after I addressed the underlying disk issue (where my VM had some components)

[oivinde]

Thank You for the input.

VMDK's are on FC-disk now, so I'll try to create new ones on my NAS or local.

Will post an update as soon as (if) I get this issue sorted.

I'm doing a customer event with demo pretty soon, but I can still demo setup, config and management of vSAN, and those are the important parts 🙂