vsphere: failed vm power on; unsupported disk
i received this error message for the very first time today after importing a vendor’s vm files in vcenter. a quick google shed some light on the subject. the error indicates that the vmdk file is in a vmware workstation format that is incompatible with vsphere. to get around this the vmdk file must be converted.
to convert:
SSH into an ESXi host
run vmkfstools -i old.vmdk new.vmdk
path to datastores: /vmfs/volumes/<datastore name>
the process can take a while depending upon how large the vmdk file is.