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1 2 Previous Next 16 Replies Last post: Nov 6, 2009 10:10 AM by cgdii

Vmotion: Failed to open the swap file posted: Jan 28, 2008 11:35 PM

t07mm

19 posts since
Dec 5, 2007

Hi All,

I have just upgraded to VI2.5 and ESX 3.5 and applied the critical patches and now my Vmotion stop at 90% with 'A general system error occurred: Failed to open the swap file'.

Now this used to work, my VM currently sit on an NFS mount whilst I wait for my SAN to be installed? But this all worked in VI2 & ESX 3.02

Any ideas welcome

Cheers

Chris

Tags: vmotion, swap

Re: Vmotion: Failed to open the swap file

1. Jan 28, 2008 11:45 PM

in response to: t07mm

sonofploppy

42 posts since
Feb 22, 2007

Hi Chris,

Have you seen this forum, may find usefull......

Good luck, Paul

http://communities.vmware.com/thread/122229

Re: Vmotion: Failed to open the swap file

2. Jan 29, 2008 11:29 PM

in response to: sonofploppy

t07mm

19 posts since
Dec 5, 2007

Hi Paul,

Thanks for the link, it doesn't really help.

Strange thing was that I created a new clustered and moved two of my ESX hosts that had no VMs on. Then move a VM over, which was off.

Started the VM, then I could Migrate!!!

So moved all my other VMs (had to shut them down). And last night was working fine.

However, this morning I now have the same problem

Most annoying as under VC 2 and ESX 3.0.2 it worked flawlessly. Luckily I'm still in a pre-production stage.

Regards

Chris

Re: Vmotion: Failed to open the swap file

3. Feb 1, 2008 11:30 AM

in response to: t07mm

t8bloom

4 posts since
Nov 14, 2003

I'm having the same problem -- some of my VMs migrate fine, others fail with the same swap file message. On further investigation it looks like the VMs with this issue still show "Virtual Machine Version: 3". My current guess is that I need to shut them down and do a manual update to the VM Hardware to solve this. I'll repost once I can see if this works.

Re: Vmotion: Failed to open the swap file

4. Feb 3, 2008 10:36 PM

in response to: t8bloom

t07mm

19 posts since
Dec 5, 2007

Hi t8bloom,

If that fixes the that would be excellent! I have already shutdown all my VMs, but how do you do a hardware refresh on the VM and where do you check the VM version?

Thanks

Chris

Re: Vmotion: Failed to open the swap file

5. Feb 4, 2008 9:20 AM

in response to: t07mm

t8bloom

4 posts since
Nov 14, 2003

Yep, that did it! Once your virtual machines are shut down, you can right-click on the machine from the left pane of the VirtualCenter client, and choose "upgrade Virtual Hardware". This will update the hardware spec from 3 to 4 and should solve your problem. However, while you have them down you may also want to make sure you don't have any hardware explicitly called out in your VMs, too. Ie, remove /dev/floppy and replace with "client device", remove any USB ports, etc. as these seem to get in the way of VMotion for me.

I think this should solve it for you!

Re: Vmotion: Failed to open the swap file

6. Mar 20, 2008 1:53 PM

in response to: t8bloom

dkusic

12 posts since
Apr 24, 2007

Hi, what is this "upgrade virtual hardware" function? I do not seem to have this in my Virtual Center. I'm having the same problem where VMotion fails at 90% because of a failure to open the swap file. I've tried commenting out the swap file location in the .vmx file, and naively changing the permissions on the .vswp file, all to no avail.

Re: Vmotion: Failed to open the swap file

7. Mar 25, 2008 12:04 AM

in response to: dkusic

t07mm

19 posts since
Dec 5, 2007

In the end, I found that it was only one of the servers that I could not Vmotionj from and too.

After lots of logs being exchanged with HPs VM support, they said it was the Storage! Even though I had rebuilt the server using esx3.5 from scratch.

So in the end, all I had to do was remove the storage and re-add it using the FQDN and then it all worked fine.

Regards

Chris

Re: Vmotion: Failed to open the swap file

8. Nov 11, 2008 9:15 AM

in response to: t07mm

drewinator

31 posts since
Feb 28, 2007

Remove the NFS storage and re-add? What if mine was installed using the IP address rather then FQDN?

Re: Vmotion: Failed to open the swap file

9. Dec 1, 2008 8:30 AM

in response to: drewinator

mlm@mmc

2 posts since
Oct 22, 2007

I found that removing and re-adding the NFS storage, either via IP or FQDN works.

However, you should make sure that all hosts use either FQDN or IP and not a mixture of both across hosts inside a cluster.

Cheers

Mark

Re: Vmotion: Failed to open the swap file

10. Jan 20, 2009 7:27 PM

in response to: t8bloom

alasorsa

13 posts since
Jul 30, 2008

Yes, I would love to know where I can find these options for upgrading the Virtual Hardware within Virtual Center.

As for removing storage and readding it...that is somewhat of a problem if you're trying to migrate active VMs from one host to another...as the VMs on that host are using that storage. I don't think they'd take too kindly to having the rug pulled out from under them. My storage is IP based...and its consistent throughout the cluster.

I've tried the Mem.VMOverheadGrowth setting to 5 but that didn't change anything. Setting resource pool settings to normal didn't really do much except mess up the settings within one of my resource pools. I decided to stop before I really messed something up. Hmmm...still stumped.

Re: Vmotion: Failed to open the swap file

11. Mar 23, 2009 1:07 AM

in response to: mlm@mmc

nhwuxiaojun

2 posts since
Mar 22, 2009

I'm puzzled in this .could somebody tell me the way to resolve vmotion issue

Thanks all

Re: Vmotion: Failed to open the swap file

12. Mar 23, 2009 5:59 AM

in response to: nhwuxiaojun

alasorsa

13 posts since
Jul 30, 2008

I found that updating to a newer version of VC did the trick. We went to update 3 and of course, update 4 came out a couple weeks later.

But all seems to be normal now.