vMotion not showing available hosts

[tman24]

I've just completed an upgrade from 3 x ESXi 5.0 hosts and a vCenter 5.1 appliance (Essentials Plus) to ESXi 6.0.5050593 and VCSA 6.5.5973321. This is a fully supported VMware setup. I upgraded the licenses and applied them to the new setup ok.

One very strange observation is that when I try and vmotion a VM to another host, if I select 'Change compute resource only', invariably the only destination host I'll see is the host the VM is currently running on - no other cluster hosts will show. If though, I select 'Change both compute resource and storage', I can expand the cluster and see all hosts. This method of migrating the VM will work, but I have to 'fake' a datastore change selection.

Things I've verified are;

It happens in both the Flash and HTML UI's.

Sometimes I will see all the migration hosts, but not all the time and very inconsistently

The message pre-migration will always show 'Compatability checks succeeded'.

I thought initially it was out of date VMware Tools, and it certainly looked more promising when tools was updated to 10.0.9 (build 10249), but then it all seemed to revert back and the same things happen. Is this a bug? I know I'm not running the latest ESXi version, or even the latest build of ESXi 6.0, but I'm not quite ready for that yet. It never happened in 5.x.

Ideas?

Thanks

[RajeevVCP4]

plz paste error screen shot

[tman24]

Thanks, but there isn't any error. Almost always, I just don't visibly see any other host to migrate to other than the host the VM is currently running on when stepping through the 'migrate' wizard. As I have the vMotion license, I should see all hosts in the cluster.

[homerzzz]

What browser are you using? Have you tried a different one?

[KoroSensei]

Same here.  Using ESXI 6.5 and almost always a missing host under available VMotion resource.  Tried Firefox, Chrome, IE, Safari and they are all the same.

[felixvang]

Same here! I just migrated from v5.5 to v6.5 and it only happened to one of my Windows 7 vm box.  I tried other Windows and it worked fine.

[Yuva_1990]

Hi

we have seen this issue when we try to choose only compute it will not list all the esxi host and workaround would be using both both compute and storage option which would list all the esxi hosts it seems to be an issue with api used when we choose only compute during migration

Regards

Yuvaraj

[admin]

■ Verify that you have at least two ESXi hosts that are licensed for vMotion or are in evaluation mode.

■Verify that you have running instances of vCenter Server and the vSphere Web Client.

■Verify that hosts have access to shared storage of a supported type, such as Fibre Channel, iSCSI, or NAS.

■Verify that the source and destination hosts have compatible CPUs.

■Verify that hosts have access to the same physical networks.

■Verify that you have at least one active Gigabit Ethernet adapter on each host.

■Virtual machine files must be on shared storage visible by the hosts.

■Virtual machines must run a supported operating system.

■Virtual machines must not have a connection to a virtual media device with a mounted local image.

■Virtual machines must not have a connection to an internal vSwitch that is not connected to a physical network.

■Virtual machines must have access to the same subnets.

■Virtual machines must not have CPU affinity configured.

If you found my answers useful please consider marking them as Correct OR Helpful

[srii]

Hi tman,

First ensure that Vmotion is Enabled(@Vmkernel port ->properties) at both Hosts which you are trying to migrate th vm's.

Check there are resources available where you are trying to migrate.

This may help you out!!

Please reply if it is helpful for you so I can share my views in this blog!!

Thanks:)

[Nicodemus555]

Having this same problem and hoping for a little help, please.

Company is rolling out vSphere 6.5 in January, and have built out a home lab. Successfully have VCSA, two Hosts in a cluster, and a VM running Ubuntu.

vMotion, HA, DRS are all enabled, have a shared iSCSI storage (OpenFiler) but when attempting to migrate the VM between Hosts the selection displays ONLY the Host being migrated from?

Being a relative Newb to networking--can someone please point me to what is missing?

[krobertsIAA]

It is 6.5 which is relatively new so it is POSSIBLE that there is a bug, I'm no vExpert or VCDX but I'll out that out there.

My actionable theory would be the vmotion network, as others have stated,

make sure that checkbox is checked at the portgroup level,

vlan id matches,

ips in the same subnet,

only one portgroup has vmotion enabled,

do some vmkpings through ssh if you can.

[admedsol]

We have seen this problem with vCenter 6.5 and vSphere 6 hosts. Weirdly, if you open the console for the VM you are trying to migrate, then close it and try again all the hosts appear in the window. We have a call raised with VMware, but nothing they've attempted has resolved the issue so far. VMware say it's an issue with DRS, but we're on standard license, so not using it.

[user2018]

Same problem here with VCSA 6.5 lastest update.

It looks like a bug with the client interface because we can run vmotion with powercli without any problem.

But the web GUI, sometimes don't show us all the hosts available but only the host where the vm is running.

As proposed by admedsol,

Open the console and close it immediately after seems to unlock the list =)

Do you have any official answer from VMware about your case/problem ? You can pressure them ... because you are NOT alone.

It 's definitely a bug.

[sc_21111]

I ran into this problem too .

I've upgraded from VCSA 6.0 to VCSA 6.5 .

Any update or fix on this , apart from opening the VM console as suggested on this thread ?

[jarofbits]

I had the same problem, but it was due to local datastore I used to mount iso file when installing VM. I had CD/DVD not connected but even that local datastore was listed in "Related Objects" in VM's summary tab. I changed to iso on shared datastore (not connected) and all hosts are available to be destination compute resource in migrate wizard.

[Kzyho]

Thanks for advice. Pointing CD to vmtools iso or any other iso on shared storage worked it out. I see now other hosts accessible for vMotion.

[ereal123]

Yes, I'm using vCSA 6.5 and on the VM I was trying to vmotion, under CD/DVD I had to select client device instead of local datastore in order to be able to see all hosts listed!

[GerberFCU]

This is solved the problem!

[doma2k]

Agreed. This might be likely the cause.

In addition, if you migrate both CPU and Storage on the next screen it is showing info about attached devices..

This way you can edit the VM hardware settings accordingly. For example by choosing Client Device to CD/DVD drive

[VMguyatVA]

It might has to do with VM snapshot.

You should be able to see all hosts once you remove snapshot from VM.

[Hank64]

The local storage iso was also my issue...  moved to shared datastore iso and disconnected, now all esxi boxes show as expected...Thanks

[rafajimot]

I have the same problem. Vcenter 6.5 (in Windows platform) and ESXi Host 6. In my case, the workaround of chage CD to shared iso its not working. Any news about that?.

[Chris Isaksen]

We just added a new 6.5 host and ran into this and I found this -> VMware Knowledge Base

EVC mode mismatch causes virtual machine migration issues (2014835) 

The VM's can have a different EVC Mode than the host they are running on.  Don't know how it would have happened but there is a solution in the KB article.

I had several vm's running on a EVC mode older then any of our current CPU's.  Any of those VM's with the older EVC modes would not see the new host. The really weird thing is that the host we just add was the exact same cpu as 2 hosts we upgraded 6 months ago, and the VM's with the old EVC mode can see those just fine.   Only difference is the new server was not upgraded from previous release but a fresh install of ESXi 6.5

Hope this helps.

[gbaughma]

Make sure that all of the datastores for the VM you are trying to migrate exist on the target host.

I had this problem, and discovered that all of my datastores were not on the target, so it wouldn't give me the option to migrate a VM over there.

[lmoglie]

Hi tman24

I got a same issue. Supposing that such configuration was working correctly in the previous version before the upgrading and nothing has changed. So, try to check if any node is correctly licensed and recognized correctly from the license services (from the web client). After that if they are missed from the license tab but are working properly on the cluster, login into the host by ssh and restart the services:

/etc/init.d/hostd restart

/etc/init.d/vpxa restart

then try to vMotion again.

[KKrtz]

Hello.

I am running into the same issue since upgrade to 6.5. On some VMs (same host) I am able to vMotion to another host. Other are not working!

So far the only "trick" which helps is to click on "open console" and close it. Afterwards I am able to vMotion to another host for this VM. Seems like a bug!

Behavior in Flash and HTML5  version is the same...

Any advises?

Thx

[SEA5C]

Hi,

I had the same issue.  I solved this issue by changing the "CD/DVD drive 1" and "Floppy drive 1"  to "Client device". You have to do on all Virtual machines by selecting the "Edit options". Then perform the vMotion, you will  see all available servers in the cluster. I am using 6.7 version.

Regards,

Vasu

[ThomasDwan]

Just had this issue myself now in ESX 6.5, with all updates available as of 24/07/2018 installed.

The issue for me turned out to be that the 2 VMs affected for me had Virtual Optical Drives added, rather than any snapshots being present. The drives didn't have any ISO's loaded, and they weren't 'connected' to the VMs, but them being added to the config was enough.

As soon as I edited the settings of these two VMs, and removed the Optical Drives, i was able to move them to any other server in the farm.

[BrassMunkie]

In my particular case, I had not re-added the connection to the SAN in which our VMs are stored. vMotion was configured and the single host was not available in any list. I stumbled across this question searching for answers. I thought I'd add my situation if it helps anyone else having the same problem. I skipped a step in reconfiguring the new host. Once I added the access to the SAN again, the host showed up and all was fine for vMotion events. Hope this helps someone out there. Thanks for all the input.

[Mukz9]

Please refer to the KB article VMware Knowledge Base.  It appears to be a similar issue.

As per this KB, the workaround is as follows

1. From the vSphere Web Client select an affected Virtual Machine and click Launch Remote console. Once it is loaded, close the session
2. Run the migration again.

Thanks