Migrating to ESX 4, vmotion of former 3.5 guests?

[steveanderson3]

We are slowly making the move to ESX 4. We have vcenter 4.0 installed, managing our esx 3.5 hosts. We've added two ESX 4 hosts and are beginning some testing. I've found that vmotion works just fine for machines created from our original templates, to the esx 4 hosts. However, when I bring an existing vm from a 3.5 host, upgrade the tools and vm hardware, I cannot vmotion between the two ESX 4 hosts. I've hidden and exposed the NX/XD flag, to no avail.

Has anyone else seen this behavior? I've attached the cpu error message

[mudha]

it is not always true that VMotion will work always if you hidden the NX/XD flag. BTW from which host to which one you are migrating is it compatiblw with VMotion ?

it has to migrate 3.5 VM's to 4.0 if your CPU's are compatible.

[steveanderson3]

I've moved a vm from a 3.5 cluster to the new 4.0 cluster. Upgraded tools, and vm hardware to version 7. Now, I'm unable to vmotion between the hosts in the 4.0 cluster. I know that I cannot go back to 3.5 now that the vm hardware version has been upgraded, but I'm unable to vmotion now even between my identical 4.0 host servers.

A new vm created in the 4.0 cluster can vmotion all day long, so I know that everything else about the cluster and the 4.0 hosts is set up properly. This appears to be a specific issue of vm's living in 3.5, being upgraded and moved to 4.0

[bulletprooffool]

ESX 3.5 does not support version 7 VMs,

You will need to keep them as version 4 hardware or they will not migrate back.

http://www.vladan.fr/esx-4-and-vms-with-hardware-version-7/

[toha · Accepted solution]

Yes, there is an KB article about this problem

http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?cmd=displayKC&docType=kc&externalId=1013011

[mudha]

are you able to change your VM version back to 4 in that case you should be able to migrate it.

[steveanderson3]

Thanks for the article toha, and thank you for actually reading my question

I reset the cpu advanced features and all is working now.