Alarm 'vSphere HA virtual machine failover failed' occurred.

Products

• VMware vCenter Server
• VMware vSphere ESXi

Issue/Introduction

• One ESXi host in the cluster was shut down.
• The FDM log on the vSphere HA FDM master node outputs a log message on all other hosts indicating "cannot access VM's home datastore".
  fdm
  yyyy-mm-ddThh:mm:ss,nnnZ verbose fdm[***] [Originator@[*** sub=Cluster opID=SWI-[***] Marking slave host-*** as unreachable
  ...
  yyyy-mm-ddThh:mm:ss,nnnZ verbose fdm[***] [Originator@*** sub=Placement opID=***] SPE: Processing placement for VM /vmfs/volumes/***/***/***.vmx
  yyyy-mm-ddThh:mm:ss,nnnZ info fdm[***] [Originator@*** sub=Placement opID=***] SPE: VM /vmfs/volumes/***/***/***.vmx has 0 compatible hosts
  yyyy-mm-ddThh:mm:ss,nnnZ verbose fdm[***] [Originator@*** sub=Placement opID=***] No recommendation is generated
  yyyy-mm-ddThh:mm:ss,nnnZ verbose fdm[***] [Originator@*** sub=Placement opID=***] Vm /vmfs/volumes/***/***/***.vmx failed placement with fault [N3Vim5Fault26InsufficientResourcesFaultE:***]
  ...
  yyyy-mm-ddThh:mm:ss,nnnZ verbose fdm[***] [Originator@*** sub=Invt opID=***] Host __localhost__ cannot access VM's home datastore: /vmfs/volumes/*** as the datastore isn't in inventory
  yyyy-mm-ddThh:mm:ss,nnnZ verbose fdm[***] [Originator@*** sub=Invt opID=***] Host host-*** cannot access VM's home datastore: /vmfs/volumes/*** as the datastore isn't in inventory

Environment

VMware ESXi 7.0.3
VMware vCenter Server 7.0.3

Cause

The virtual machine is located on an ESXi local datastore, and other ESXi hosts cannot access that datastore.

Resolution

Run the virtual machine on a datastore that is accessible from other ESXi hosts as well.