Storage vMotion will not migrate powered on guest

[FCTaylor]

I originally installed vSphere 5.0 update 2 and then installed the guests on the local machine datastore to get us virtualized. I just installed our SAN and am now trying to migrate the guests to the new SAN using storage vMotion. Both the vCenter Server and the host machines are in evaluation mode so everything is available. I was able to move one machine yesterday, but today when I try to do a vMotion it tells me the machine must be powered off to migrate. I tried moving the unit I moved yesterday back to the original datastore and even it is telling me it must be powered off first, but I moved it successfully yesterday.

Is this some limitation in the evaluation license that will only allow for one storage vMotion event or do I have some other problem?

[weinstein5]

Welcome to the Community - I have moved your question to a more appropriate forum -

[peetz]

You have some other problem, but I'm not sure which ...

Are you by chance trying to move the VM to another datastore and to another host at the same time? Doing this with the VM powered on would be enhanced vMotion and that is available in 5.1 only. However, pure Storage vMotion (moving to another datastore while staying on the same host) should be possible online, and also multiple times even with eval licenses.

Another thought: Have you enabled vMotion on the host's VMkernel interface?

Just curious: Why are you starting with 5.0, and not with the current release 5.1?

[FCTaylor]

I am attempting to move the guest from the VM host's local datastore to my new SAN datastore. When I right click on the guest I get the Migrate Virtual Machine window with the "Change host" and "Change datastore" options. The "Change both host and datastore" option is greyed out. Under the last option is a warning icon with the message "The virtual machine must be powered off to change th eVM's host and datastore."

I select the "Change datastore" option and can proceed to the next screen where I can select the datastore destination. I leave the default virtual disk format as "same format as source" and selct the target datastore. The VM Storage Profile option is greyed out and has a warning icon next to it. I select next and then the Finish button. The relocation task starts then I get an error message "Invalid configuration for device '9'" and the task stops.

[peetz]

This might be caused by some problem with the VM's NIC configuration.

Please check if it is properly connected to an existing port group.

If you are using distributed switches then also check VMware KB: Cloning a virtual machine fails with the error: Invalid configuration for device device_n...

[FCTaylor]

I would love to say that I found the issue and can provide my solution. Unfortunately, I have no idea what was causing this error or what fixed the issue. I went home from work totally frustrated by this issue and came in the next morning, tired the migrate function again and it worked. On a few guest machines I did have to change the CD/DVD Drive to "Client Device" before the migrate would work but that was expected and I do not believe it was the source of this issue.

Thank you to those that replied and tried to assist.