Cannot Restore VM to ESXi (code 2048)

Situation

A restore plan finishes with the following warning: Could not restore virtual machine(s) to the ESXi host. Some disks are on NVMe host controller: restoring of virtual machines with disks on NVMe controllers is not supported. An attempt to switch to the SCSI controller failed. The list of VMs that were not restored.

Cause

This warning occurs for VMs that have some disks on the NVMe host controller. The restore of VMs with such disks is not supported. An attempt to change the controller type was performed but failed. Such virtual machines are skipped and not restored. You can find the list of VMs that were not restored at the bottom of this warning.

Solution

Since restoring VMs with disks on the NVMe host controller is not supported, you can try to restore VMs as virtual disks and then export them to your ESXi host. To do this, edit the restore plan.

1. Open the restore plan that produced this warning.
2. Click Edit.
3. Follow the restore wizard to the Restore Type step.
4. Change the restore type to Restore As a Virtual Disk.
5. Follow the wizard to the end, save the configuration, and run the restore plan.
6. Once you have the restored VMDK file, copy it to the datastore.
7. Log in to vCenter > right-click the cluster or host > select New Virtual Machine.
8. Select Create a New Virtual Machine as the creation type, then click Next.
9. Type a name for the new virtual machine, select the deployment location, and click Next.
10. Configure compute resources, and click Next.
11. Configure storage, and click Next.
12. Select compatibility, and click Next.
13. Select a guest OS, and click Next.
14. Customize hardware: click ADD NEW DEVICE, select Existing Hard Disk, select the VMDK file from the datastore, then click Next.
15. Review the summary of the job and click Finish.