Not shure about the vm Kernal messages I will work on that,I do see this in events. This shows before the log of the second vm starting. I see several of them.
Connect to the server using ssh and browse to /var/log. Do a tail on vmkernel.log file like tail -f vmkernel.log.
Now try to power on the VMs.
Also, go to /vmfs/volumes/<VMdatastore>/VM/vmware.log file and see the messages when you are powering on the VMs.
I also see in the performance tab that disk utilization drops to 0
That is because, the virtual disks are never used since the VMs are unable to be powered on. vmware.log file will give more information.