vMotion does not complete, VMs provide no actions

[AlphaAdmin]

Hello, this is on ESXi 5.5 with 3 VMhosts. I tried to vMotion a handful of virtual machines. One of them moved 100%, the other moved but the progress bar got stuck at 91%, the other failed. In all cases the machines got stuck at an indeterminate state, if I right click on them the only actions I get are "console" and "snapshots" (no power on, or shut down, etc). So the VMs seem to be stuck in a "migrating" state. Any idea what is going on? The VMs are practically useless under these circumstances. Thanks.

[abhilashhb]

You will have to SSH into the ESXi host and kill the task.

Three ways to kill a frozen vSphere ESXi host virtual machine - Virtualization Pro

[BenLiebowitz]

Can you describe your networking setup?  Are you using Standard or Distributed switches?  Is vMotion on a dedicated NIC or is it shared with management or something? 

Thanks.

[AlphaAdmin]

Hello and thanks for the replies. Following the well-known "Dilbert" approach, I let things settle overnight and the problem was gone in the morning! 🙂

Good pointer on the "how to kill ESXi tasks" link, thanks!

[a_p_]

FYI, the latest patch fixes an issue with vMotion (see VMware KB: VMware ESXi 5.5, Patch ESXi-5.5.0-20141204001-standard)

Not sure whether this is what caused the issue in your case, but maybe worth checking.

André