WSFC cluster VMs fail to power on

Products

• VMware vSphere ESXi

Issue/Introduction

2 node WSFC (Windows Server Failover Cluster) cluster VMs fail to power on with the following message:
Unable to create virtual SCSI device for scsi1:0, '/vmfs/volumes/########-377ca29c-289c-############/vm_disk/vm_disk_#.vmdk' Failed to start the virtual machine. Module DevicePowerOn power on failed.

Environment

ESXi 7.x
ESXi 8.x
WSFC

Cause

This issue can occur if the WSFC cluster was not setup as per the guidelines (see Additional Information section for links to guidelines). On such requirement is that the Clustered VMDKs are placed in a separate datastore that has the Clustered VMDK feature enabled.

Resolution

Take the following steps to resolve the issue:

1. Create a new datastore and enable the Clustered VMDK feature. Activating Clustered VMDK Support
2. Migrate the clustered VMDKs to the datastore that has the Clustered VMDK feature enabled
3. Enable perennial reservation for the LUN that is backing the datastore. Change Perennial Reservation Settings on ESXiHosts
4. Create a VM/Host rule on the cluster to keep the VMs on separate hosts. Create a VM-Host Affinity Rule

Additional Information

Guidelines for supported configurations
VMware vSphere 7.x
VMware vSphere 8.x