Strange VM quantity / power state messages when performing vMotion

[jlassglwas]

We recently upgraded to the latest "K" releases for vCenter and ESXi.  Since upgrading, we are seeing some inconsistent messages when performing vMotions.

Examples -

1. I choose to vMotion VM's to another host.  The confirmation to move the VM's shows a different quantity, sometimes wildly different from the number of VM's to be migrated.
2. I choose again to vMotion VM's.  All are in the same power state, but vCenter shows the message, "All VMs to be migrated in a batch must be in the same power state."

When a vMotion batch has the discrepancy in quantity, the migration tasks also show inconsistently in the console, not in order in the task list as would be expected.  In some cases, a newer batch of migrations will have start times that are before an earlier batch of migrations.

Images of what I am describing are attached.  We are seeing this across multiple vCenter instances, and on hosts both upgraded from 6.7.3 to 7.0.3 and hosts freshly provisioned on 7.0.3.  The vMotions all complete successfully, though, except for the power related vMotions.  Then I have to select a smaller quantity, sometimes down to just 1 VM, to get the migration to execute.  These discrepancies do not appear to be having any impact on VM inventory or configuration.

[Shen88]

@jlassglwas,

Ideally, Powered ON VM's are seen as a Live Migration and run over the vMotion network which is generally on a 10Gb link. Whereas, when a Powered OFF VM is migrated it is seen as a Cold Migration and runs over the Management Network which maybe a on a 1Gb link. So, there might be difference in the time taken to perform migrations of different power state VMs.

Refer this documentation on Network Traffic for Cold Migration (vmware.com)

With regards to the quantity of the VMs, I can't think of anything that might be going wrong other than the selection itself that is not visible when VMs are chosen in bulk.