Powering on a virtual machine fails with the error: Heap could not be grown by bytes for allocation of bytes

Products

• VMware vSphere ESXi

Issue/Introduction

Symptoms:

• Cannot power on a virtual machine
• Powering on a virtual machine fails
• You see the error:
  
  An error was received from the ESX host while powering on VM <vm name>.
  Failed to start the virtual machine.
  Module DiskEarly power on failed.
  Cannot open the disk '/vmfs/volumes/<datastore>/<vm name>/<.vmdk>' or one of the snapshot disks it depends on.
  12 (Cannot allocate memory)
  Heap <heap name> could not be grown by <size> bytes for allocation of <size> bytes

Cause

This issue occurs if the ESX host is unable to open the virtual disk of the virtual machine, because one of the layers or modules in the ESXi storage stack ran out of its heap memory.

Resolution

To understand the cause that led to the exhaustion of a module's heap it is important to collect essential diagnostic information from the ESXi host. Open a support request with VMware GSS.

To work around this issue, reboot the ESXi host to reinitialize all the heaps in the system. But, VMware recommends to collect essential diagnostic information including the live memory dump of ESXi host with the help of VMware GS before rebooting the host.

Note: If you see this issue in an ESXi 5.5 host and the heap that ran out of space is 'seSparse', then install VMware ESXi 5.5, Patch ESXi550-201312401-BG to resolve this issue. For more information , see VMware ESXi 5.5, Patch ESXi550-201312401-BG: Updates esx-base(2063788).

Additional Information

VMware ESXi 5.5, Patch ESXi550-201312401-BG: Updates esx-base