VM stuck in Partially Powered state in Cloud Director despite successful power-on task

Products

• VMware vCenter Server
• VMware Telco Cloud Platform
• VMware Cloud Director

Issue/Introduction

• VMs show "Partially Powered Off" in VCD Tenant UI.
• The VCD Task Console shows the Power On task as "Successful".
• In vcloud-container-debug.log, you see: 

  com.vmware.ssdc.library.exceptions.VmToolsUnavailable.

• VM is moved automatically to a host without capacity to allow the power on
• DRS is configured to Partially Automated.

Environment

VC: 7.0U3

TCP: 3.1

VCD: 10.3.3.2

Cause

DRS cannot find a host that satisfies all affinity rules and resource reservations. Because DRS is in "Partially Automated" mode, it may successfully "place" the VM but fail to execute the power-on if the target host cannot provide the required reservations at the moment of execution.

Resolution

1. Identify Host Bottlenecks: Check vCenter for DRS recommendations or host resource warnings 
2. Synchronize Management Agents: Restart ESXi management agents (services.sh restart) on hosts showing resource discrepancies.
3. Maintenance Mode: Place problematic hosts in Maintenance Mode to force DRS to re-evaluate placement across the remaining cluster.

Workaround: Remove reservations of the VM or create a temporary affinity rule to pin the VM to a known good host to bypass vMotion/DRS placement conflicts.