In this post we are going to go over a quick fix for not being able to start a Virtual Machine (VM) through vCenter Server Appliance (VCSA). I will preface my solution by saying this is a quick way to get the VM going and probably not the best long term solution depending how often your VMs get turned off.

For reference I am discussing VCSA version 7 and ESXi version 7.0.3.

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1. SECTION I – The Problem
2. SECTION II – The Solution
3. SECTION III – Footnotes

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SECTION I – The Problem

The error message I have commonly run into is:

Failed to Start VM: Virtual Machine no Compatible with any Host

This is a very frustrating error message to get considering I literally just had the VM powered on before I had a power outage.

After some googling it seemed like there was 3 main fixes that people were suggesting:

1. Make sure your ESXi host has enough resource to run the VM.
2. Make sure Distributed Resource Scheduler (DRS) was turned off on the cluster where the VM is.
3. Delete the VM and preserve the disk and then re-create the VM and attach the old disk back to it.

Now these are all great suggestions, but, what do you do if you have plenty of resource, DRS is turned off and you don’t want to delete the VM and re-attach the disk because you want the minimal effort approach to get the VM going without causing further issues. Well the solution described in the next section is the quick and dirty way to get it going.

One more point to make if from my reading it seems like this issue can be cause when migrating the VM between hosts with different Central Processor Unit¹ (CPU) architectures. I don’t know exactly why and it doesn’t happen to all VMs that are migrated.

SECTION II – The Solution

The solution isn’t long winded, so lets get straight to the point. From the VCSA web Graphical User Interface (GUI) locate which ESXi host the VM is actually on.

Log in to the ESXi host web GUI, locate the VM and then select power on. Most likely unless there is a genuine problem with the VM such as a corrupt VM configuration file or an issue with your ESXi host itself then the VM will work just fine.

Additionally, once the VM is powered on it will be manageable from VCSA just as normal.

The reason I say this is quick and dirty is because I am not sure yet if this will stop the problem from happening or next time I come to start the VM I will run into the same problem. Either way when I find out I will endeavour to return to this post and update it with whether for the rest of the VMs life I will have to start it from the ESXi web GUI directly rather than from the VCSA web GUI.

SECTION III – Footnotes

1. CPU – the brain of the computer. It carries out calculations for processing of binary values. ↩︎