Can't migrate VMs to New host in cluster

[rudybrewster]

Hi

I've just added a fourth host into our ESX4.1 cluster, and all appears fine - it added in ok, and HA etc went through without problems, but when I try and migrate a VM to it I get error messages:

This is a VM which wasa powered off on another host

This is a VM which was powered on:

The message I get in to bar is:

This operation is not allowed in the current state or an error occrured while communicating with the remote host.

I've checked I can browse to all of the data stores (in fact those two came from an NFS datastore which I can navigate to on the host and write to as I created a test folder)

Any ideas?

I restarted the management services on the host itself:

service mgmt-vmware restart

but no luck.

[john23]

First :

disable HA and try to migrate the vm, is it allowing?

[athlon_crazy]

do you enable vMotion?

[rudybrewster]

vMotion is enabled.

Shall I remove HA from the whole cluster?

[john23]

yeah,disable and check vmotion works or not?

[rudybrewster]

Ok disabled HA on the cluster, and it still gives the same error.

Renable HA?

[john23]

Can you check error message in hostd and vpxa logs

[rudybrewster]

Ok after a quick look in hostd I can see these messages:

Could not expand environment variable HOME

Looking up object with name = "64" failed.

Looking up object with name = "haTask-ha-host-vim.HostSystem.acquireCimServicesTicket-191" failed.

They seem to be the only problems recently in it.

[krishna_v78]

Hi,

I would suggest to check vMotion network IP address are unique on new host.

Also try to ping new vmotion IP from existing host using vmkping command.

B@lu

[rudybrewster]

You make a good point, the IP was free, but in DNS it is still assigned to an old server which no longer exists.

I will get DNS updated and see if this works, I'll be back as soon as that's done. Thanks everyone so far!

[john23]

check vmkping .

from source and destination is pinging (vmkping) each other

[rudybrewster]

I can vmkping from the host4 to the other hosts on the vmkernel IP (that's the right IP?) and from other hosts to the host4 kernel IP.

[krishna_v78]

Hi,

Also, make sure that new host has valid FQDN (able to resolve from other machine)

B@lu

[rudybrewster]

Hi

It's now working, in the end it was a problem on our SAN.

The NFS datastore I was using only gave me access to the top level folders, so I could create a folder in there where all the VMs are, browse it fine etc, but what I didnt try was to go down a level into the folder I created and create a new folder in there, which would have given me an access denied message.

Obviously as I'd just created the new host I thought it would be that side - especially as I could see and write to the datastore.

Thanks for everyone's help on this.