ESX/ESXi error: The host does not have sufficient memory resources to satisfy the reservation

Products

• VMware vCenter Server
• VMware vSphere ESXi

Issue/Introduction

Symptoms:

• Cannot power on any virtual machines on a specific host in vCenter Server.
• Cannot vMotion virtual machines onto a specific one host.
• In both instances, you see the error:
  
  The host does not have sufficient memory resources to satisfy the reservation.
   
• This error occurs even though the host and resource pool(s) have sufficient resources.

Environment

VMware ESX 4.1.x
VMware vCenter Server 6.0.x
VMware vCenter Server 4.1.x
VMware ESXi 4.1.x Installable
VMware vCenter Server 6.5.x
VMware ESXi 4.1.x Embedded
VMware vCenter Server 6.7.x
VMware vCenter Server 5.0.x
VMware vCenter Server 5.1.x

Cause

High Availability (HA) admission control is enabled and set to Specify a failover host and this particular host is reserved for HA failover.

 

If a host is reserved for the purpose of HA failover, it cannot be used to host any other virtual machines.

Resolution

To resolve this issue, perform one of these options:

• Disable HA Admission Control:
• 1. Right-click the cluster in vCenter Server and choose Settings.
  2. In Configure tab, Select "vSphere Availability" Click EDIT for vSphere HA.
  3. Select Admission Control.
  4. Select "Disabled" for define host failover capacity by
      
• Choose another host for HA Failover:
  1. Right-click the cluster in vCenter Server and choose Settings.
  2. In Configure tab, Select "vSphere Availability" Click EDIT for vSphere HA.
  3. Select Admission Control.
  4. Select "Dedicated failover hosts" for define host failover capacity and select another host.
      
• Choose another HA admission control policy:
  1. Right-click the cluster in vCenter Server and choose Settings.
  2. In Configure tab, Select "vSphere Availability" Click EDIT for vSphere HA.
  3. Select Admission Control.
  4. Select define host failover capacity by:
  5. • Cluster resource percentage
       
       Or
        
     • Slot Policy (powered-on VMs)

Additional Information

For more information, see Creating and Using vSphere HA Clusters in the vSphere 5.0 Availability Guide.
For more information, see Creating and Using vSphere HA Clusters in the vSphere 5.1 Availability Guide.