Instance in error status: libvirt error

Rarely, you might see an instance go into an error state, and the usual command

nova reset-state --active INSTANCE-ID

doesn’t work for getting it operational again. If you try to view the instance’s console log, it’s empty, and the command

nova show INSTANCE-ID

shows an error similar to:

internal error: process exited while connecting to monitor:
Length mismatch: vga.vram: 1000000 in != 800000 qemu:
warning: error while loading state for instance 0x0 of device 'ram' load of migration failed ...
raise libvirtError (\'virDomainCreateWithFlags() failed\'

If this happens to you, please open a support ticket and have us issue the command

virsh start --force-boot instance-000000cd

for the relevant instance.