Attempt to Power On a Virtual Machine Fails Due to a MAC Address Conflict

After you set a certain static MAC address to a virtual machine adapter, you cannot power on the virtual machine.

Problem

In the vSphere Client, after you assign a MAC address within the range 00:50:56:40:YY:ZZ – 00:50:56:7F:YY:ZZ to a virtual machine, attempts to power the virtual machine on fail with a status message that the MAC address is in conflict.

00:50:56:XX:YY:ZZ is not a valid static Ethernet address. It
conflicts with VMware reserved MACs for other usage.

Cause

You attempt to assign a MAC address which starts with the VMware OUI 00:50:56 and is within the address range allocated for host VMkernel adapters on the vCenter Server system.

Solution

If you want to preserve the VMware OUI prefix, set a static MAC address within the range 00:50:56:00:00:00 – 00:50:56:3F:FF:FF. Otherwise, set an arbitrary MAC address whose prefix is different from the VMware OUI one. For information about the ranges available for static MAC addresses that have the VMware OUI prefix, see the vSphere Networking documentation.