Virtual machine creation may fail because agent is unable to retrieve VM creation options from the host.

Products

• VMware vSphere ESXi
• VMware vSphere ESXi 8.0
• VMware vCenter Server
• VMware vCenter Server 8.0

Issue/Introduction

An ESXi host displays the following error message or similar in the summary pane of the ESXi host, in the vCenter GUI:

Virtual machine creation may fail because agent is unable to retrieve VM creation options from the host (N5Vmomi5Fault17HostCommunication9ExceptionE(Fault cause: vmodl.fault.HostCommunication ) <N/A>zKq7AVICAgAAANVUewETdnB4YQAA88lHbGlidm1hY29yZS5zbwABOFwcdnB4YQAB5r4dAeQMKgHqDSoChjYZbGlidm1vbWkuc28Ag+z9CgFsaWJ2aW0tdHlwZXMuc28AAeWdLgHUny4BSKwmAUHmJgHe3xsBheAbAAhILQAe2ywA4P8sAEtQUgRSeABsaWJwdGhyZWFkLnNvLjAABT9SD2xpYmMuc28uNgA=<N/A>).

Environment

VMware ESXi 7.x
VMware ESXi 8.x
VMware vCenter 7.x
VMware vCenter 8.x

Cause

The ESXi management agents on the ESXi host have stopped or may not be responding properly to the VCSA.

Resolution

Follow the steps in the following KB on restarting the management agents of the ESXi host:

Restarting Management Agents in ESXi

If the issue is happening frequently, please open a support case with VMware support and ask to perform a coredump of the hostd process for further troubleshooting.