virtual machine crashes during migration or expanding vmdk

Products

• VMware vCenter Server

Issue/Introduction

Attempting to vMotion a virtual machine or extend its disk fails with the following error:
"Object type requires hosted I/O Failed to start the virtual machine"

During such events, the vmware.log for the affected virtual machine may contain entries similar to the following:
YYYY-MM-DDT15:54:10.480Z In(05) vmx - [msg.scsi.esx.unsupportedDiskType2] Unsupported or invalid disk type 2 for 'ide0:0'. Ensure that the disk has been imported.

Environment

vCenter 7.0 and 8.0

Cause

This issue is caused by the presence of an unsupported hosted sparse virtual disk attached to the virtual machine.

Resolution

Create a clone of the VM