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flyerguybham
Contributor
Contributor

Storage vMotion failing with CPU incompatibility?

I have an ESX 4 host which has some shared storage and some local storage. I am trying to migrate the datastore for a VM on this host from the shared storage to the host's local storage. It's failing the migration validation with a "Host CPU is incompatible with the virtual machine's requirements at CPUID level 0x1 register 'ecx'".

I see some items in the knowledge base regarding this and 45nm Core 2 processors, which is what I have, but.... I'm not trying to move the VM to a different CPU. I just want to migrate the datastore.

Thoughts?

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Troy_Clavell
Immortal
Immortal

see this KB, which relates to your problem

http://kb.vmware.com/kb/1008315

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flyerguybham
Contributor
Contributor

I have read that KB article, but two things make me think it's not the

issue:

1. The article deals with VMotion from one host to another. I'm not

trying to do that - I'm not trying to VMotion to a different CPU at all.

2. The article says the remedy is to upgrade to ESX 3.5 update 2 or

later - I'm already at ESX 4.

I do see the Add'l Info that you may still see that problem in later

versions of ESX, but it's still talking about moving VMs between two

hosts. However, perhaps the same procedure will clear up the issue. I

will try that as soon as I am in a position to be able to power down the

VM, which is what I was trying to avoid in the first place.

I wonder if this was something that was broken when the hosts were

upgraded from ESX 3.5 or when the VM was upgraded to virtual hardware

version 7.

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Troy_Clavell
Immortal
Immortal

agreed, changing the CPUID may resolve the issue.

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Frank_Poelert
Contributor
Contributor

I am having the same issue in my environment. I am trying to move the VM to another datastore and it fails because of CPU incompatibility.

There are some things I don't understand:

Why do I have to select a resource pool, I just want to move the VM to another datastore.

Why can't my VM run on the host that it is currently running on? Why does it check the host at all?

These options and checks are all very well for VMotion, but have nothing to do with Storage VMotion

To me it seems someone added Storage VMotion to the already existing VMotion wizard without proper thinking. Can anyone explain the real reason for these checks please?

Thanks,

Frank Poelert

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ThompsG
Virtuoso
Virtuoso

Evening,

It does seem a waste to check the CPU however Storage VMotion does actually use VMotion when changing the disks. It just does it to the same machine. This is needed to get the VM to run on the "new" disk location.

This article explains what I'm trying to say under "How does Storage VMotion work?": http://www.vmware.com/files/pdf/VMware-Storage-VMotion-DS-EN.pdf

As you can see it actually suspends and resumes the VM, therefore the need to check CPU settings.

Kind regards.

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