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wreedctd
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

Unable to vMotion from ESXi 5.5 to 6 U1

Hello,

My Vcenter server is stuck on a 5.5 host and I cannot get it to vMotion while powered on. I only have ESXi 6 hosts left at this datacenter. If I power the VMs off, they move. Obviously I cannot power off Vcenter.

The error I get is

A general system error occurred: Failed to copy one or more of the virtual machine's disks. See the virtual machine's log for more details.

Failed to set up disks on the destination host.

vMotion migration [168430346:1445297623259034] failed to read stream keepalive: Connection closed by remote host, possibly due to timeout

Failed waiting for data. Error 195887167. Connection closed by remote host, possibly due to timeout.

Any ideas?

31 Replies
wreedctd
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

Anyone?

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wreedctd
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

Cant believe no one has seen this before.

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greco827
Expert
Expert

Your 5.5 and 6.0 hosts are the same type of hardware?

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wreedctd
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

No but that has never ever been a issue in the past. Only since the upgrade to 6 U1.

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greco827
Expert
Expert

Are your hosts all in the same cluster or in different ones?  It's likely an EVC mode incompatibility and the NX/XD flags on the VM are not compatible with the destination host.

If you are stuck, shutting down vCenter really shouldn't be a very big deal.  Just note which host it is on and use the client to connect to it directly.  Shut it down, and mark the CPUID Mask to hide the NX/XD flag.  Power it back on, and when the vCenter service is back up, you should be able to migrate it.  The whole process shouldn't take more than 10 minutes.

Out of curiosity, is your vCenter the appliance or a Windows server?

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Jimmy15
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

If LUNs are common between both ESX hosts.

1. Open vSphere client on ESX5.5 and ESX 6.0

2. Power off VC

3. remove from inventory of ESX5.5 , add inventory of ESX6.0
4. power up the VC.

Regards

Pankaj Sharma


regards



PS: Mark kudos or correct answer as appropriate 🙂
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wreedctd
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

Unfortunately the LUNS are not shared or I would have done that already. We are going to shared storage, but don't have Vcenter on it yet.


Normally if the problem was the CPU mask it would not even let you start the Vmotion. However it does. And it also failed with hosts in the same EVC cluster before we moved them all to 6.

I will try Grecos steps in a moment. Vcenter is a Windows 2012 R2 server.

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wreedctd
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

Cannot edit the Vcenter VM without Vsphere Web Client because it is on vmx-10 Version or above Smiley Sad

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greco827
Expert
Expert

You should be able to use your browser to go directly to the host just as you can in the client.

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wreedctd
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

Never done that, let me try.

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wreedctd
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

There is no webclient without Vcenter, doesnt look like. This is when going to https://ESXHOSTIP

pastedImage_0.png

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greco827
Expert
Expert

My apologies.  I could have sworn I've done this in the past, but perhaps not.

Might come down to connecting via SSH and doing things via CLI.  Alternatively, would it be possible to temporarily get a datastore which you can share between the source and target hosts to ease this transition?

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wreedctd
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

Ahh I could create a ISCSI to a Server 2012 R2 physical machine I have. Then I could move the VM. Problem is now it wont move because of EVC incompatibility. And since I cant edit the VM, this is a tough one! I really got myself in a pickle. lol

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wreedctd
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

Could I import and export the damn VMDK files with the fat client?

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brunofernandez1

you can install the webclient on the host: http://www.vladan.fr/esxi-free-web-client-interface/

btw. do you have enabled vmotion on both esx server on the vmkernel port?

the vmotion iface has to be on the same subnet.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------- If you found this or any other answer helpful, please consider to award points. (use Correct or Helpful buttons) Regards from Switzerland, B. Fernandez http://vpxa.info/
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brunofernandez1

btw with the 5.5 u2 fat client you can also edit hw level 10 vms:

Using vSphere 5.5U2 Client to edit the settings of virtual machines of version 10 or higher - VMware...

------------------------------------------------------------------------------- If you found this or any other answer helpful, please consider to award points. (use Correct or Helpful buttons) Regards from Switzerland, B. Fernandez http://vpxa.info/
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wreedctd
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

Vmotion is enabled on both Vmkernels. This site only has one subnet.

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wreedctd
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

I am using a 6.0 Fat Client.

pastedImage_0.png

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brunofernandez1

so then connect with the fat client to the new and old esxi server directly.

shutdown the vcenter VM, export it as a OVA and import it on the esxi6 host...

------------------------------------------------------------------------------- If you found this or any other answer helpful, please consider to award points. (use Correct or Helpful buttons) Regards from Switzerland, B. Fernandez http://vpxa.info/
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