• Virtual machines in the Inventory appear as Unprotected in the vSphere HA (High Availability) Protection column.
• Virtual machines on a particular datastore shows as unprotected and shows as protected when migrated to a different datastore.
• The summary tab of the virtual machine displays the warning:
  
  The virtual machine failed to become vSphere HA Protected and HA may not attempt to restart it after a failure.
   
• The virtual machine summary shows the virtual machines as Protected
• This issue can be triggered by clicking the column header to sort by the vSphere HA Protection column
• In the /var/log/fdm.log file, the virtual machine is listed as protected and you see entries similar to:
   
  <YYYY-MM-DD>T<time> [3ABD5B90 verbose 'Cluster' opID=SWI-ce9c3232-ac] [ClusterDatastore::ReconcileVCProtectList] New protected vm /vmfs/volumes/512d6575-d9c3e988-6513-0025b52a213f/vmtest/vmtest.vmx </time>
  <YYYY-MM-DD>T<time> [3AD5BB90 verbose 'PropertyProvider' opID=SWI-c0cd39b0] RecordOp ADD: protectedVm["/vmfs/volumes/512d6575-d9c3e988-6513-0025b52a213f/vmtest/vmtest.vmx"], fdmService</time>
   
• In the C:\ProgramData\VMware\VMware VirtualCenter\Logs\vpxd.log file, you see entries similar to:
  
  <YYYY-MM-DD>T<time> [05924 info 'vmdasVm'] [VmMo::SetDesiredDasProtectState] desired protection state for VM vm-210 'unprotected' -> 'protected'
  </time>
  <YYYY-MM-DD>T<time> [05924 info 'vmdasVm'] [VmMo::UpdateActualDasProtectStateLocked] actual protection state for VM vm-210 'n/a' -> 'unprotected'
  </time>

Note: The preceding log excerpts are only examples. Date, time, and environmental variables may vary depending on your environment.

• Troubleshooting VMware High Availability (HA) issues in VMware vCenter Server 5.x and 6.0
• VMs become HA unprotected after power-on
• Migrating virtual machine to another HA cluster changes the virtual machine state from Protected to Unprotected