I didn’t know this was possible. But you can easily check via the COS if autostarting of VM’s in enabled or not according to this KB article:

  1. Log in as root to your ESX host with SSH.
  2. Open the /etc/vmware/hostd/vmAutoStart.xml file in text editor.
  3. Search for a line that reads:

    <enabled>true</enabled>

  4. If you find the line, the functionality is enabled. If you do not find the line, the functionality is disabled.
  5. If you want to disable autostart for all virtual machines on the host, remove the line.
  6. If you want to enable the functionality, add the line immediately after the line ending with:

    7. <dynamicProperty>

  7. Save your changes and exit.
  8. Restart the management agents on the ESX host:
    service mgmt-vmware restart