Failed to start the virtual machine.

[LordNicoll]

When I try to start a Windows 10 guess OS on a VM (with 8 CPU threads, 2GB RAM and a PCI-e passthrough) it displays this message. I've double checked and there should be no issue, there is available disk and RAM, so I'm at a loss for what is causing this.
Failed to start the virtual machine.

Failed to power on VM.

Could not power on virtual machine: msg.vmk.status.VMK_MEM_ADMIT_FAILED. See the VMware ESX Resource Management Guide for information on resource management settings.

Group vmm.41377: Failed to apply memory configuration for VMM group vmm0:BOINC-MACHINE-1-WND. (min: 524288, max: -1, minLimit: -1, shares: -3, units: pages)

[UmeshAhuja]

Hi,

Check if Distributed Resource Scheduling (DRS) have assigned limited resource to a resource pool. If so Increase the resource allocation for the resource pool.

Check if Virtual machine's host have enough memory for the reservation required?

Check if Virtual machine's resource usage matches to its resource settings?

[LordNicoll]

I know the machine has enough memory (48GiB total, with 44GiB assigned between 3 other VM's, leaving up to 4GiB free)
I'm a bit new to ESXi, so I'm not sure where the DRS settings are, but the host isn't divided into multiple resource pools, it's a single pool. This problem only happened after I removed and re-installed a VM with a larger HDD allowment, but should still have 30 GiB of HDD space left. Windows itself has 32GiB assigned.

[UmeshAhuja]

Hi,

Click on the cluster and you will get DRS tab in that you can check the setting for each VM.

Also are the other 3 VM's are in same host or in different host. If you have multiple host in a same cluster can you migrate them or load balance them.

If possible can you send me a Cluster, ESXi host and VM's utilization screenshot.