Unable to send guest power operations to a Windows VM through VMware Tools

Products

• VMware vCenter Server
• VMware vSphere ESXi

Issue/Introduction

Symptoms:

• The Windows Application Event Log for VMTools or VMtoolsd contains events similar to:
  
  [Warning] [vmsvc:guestinfo] Failed to send vmstats
[Warning ] [vmsvc:guestinfo] Error sending GuestMemInfo
[Warning [vmsvc:guestinfo] Failed to update key/value pair for type 7

Cause

This can happen if the .vmx file for the virtual machine is set to disable communication between the ESXi host and the virtual machine.

Resolution

To resolve this issue set isolation.tools.setinfo.disable to FALSE.

1. Shutdown the virtual machine through the guest operating system.
2. Connect to the ESXi host that is hosting the virtual machine with an SSH session.
3. Navigate to the virtual machines directory using:
   
   cd /vmfs/volumes/virtual_machine_datastore/virtual_machine_folder/
   
   
4. Edit the virtual machine .vmx file with:
   
   vi virtual_machine_name.vmx
   
   
5. Look for isolation.tools.setinfo.disable = "TRUE" in the file and edit it to FALSE.
   
   Example:
   
   isolation.tools.setinfo.disable = "FALSE"
   
   
6. Power on the virtual machine.

Additional Information

This setting will allow communication between the host and the VM. This setting is usually set due to security concerns and may be set by a security policy.