Troubleshooting the migration compatibility error: Currently connected network interface uses network, which is not accessible

Products

• VMware vCenter Server

Issue/Introduction

Symptoms:

• When performing a vMotion migration, you see one or more of these compatibility errors in the vMotion wizard:
   
  • Unable to migrate from source_server to destination_server: Currently connected network interface 'device' uses network 'network', which is not accessible
  • Currently connected network interface 'device' uses network 'network', which is not accessible.
     
• The Network Label on the affected virtual machine settings is blank when the network portgroup label is renamed.

Environment

VMware vCenter Server 
VMware vSphere ESXi

Cause

This issue occurs for one of these reasons:

• The portgroup names are not consistent across all of the ESX hosts in the network.
• This error may also occur when an "Out of Sync" condition exists on your vSphere Distributed Switch (see The vSphere Distributed Switch configuration on some hosts differed from that of VMware vCenter- "Out of Sync").
• The vMotion port groups security policy exceptions are not consistent across the hosts (see Troubleshooting Migration compatibility error: Currently connected network interface uses network, which is configured for different offload or security policies).

Resolution

To work around this issue, ensure that the virtual machine network portgroups are named the same between the ESX hosts that are participating in the vMotion operation. Further, ensuring the portgroups are named consistently everywhere the VM could potentially vMotion to would be preferable to allow automatic vMotion, such as through DRS or HA, to complete as well.

After validating the names are consistent, including spacing and capitalization, verify and/or change the network label of virtual machine:

1. Right-click the virtual machine and click Edit Settings.
2. Change the Network Label to the newly renamed portgroup.

Additional Information

In most cases, this is an error only seen with standard vSwitches, as a portgroup on a distributed switch (vDS) is shared between all hosts that can access the vDS and is not host-specific. That said, this same message can also be presented using a vDS with LACP configured.

If this error is seen on a vDS with LACP, run the following command in the ESXi command line for the destination host.

• esxcli network vswitch dvs vmware lacp status get

In a working LACP configuration, the expected output should show that the teaming on the physical switch side as "bundled". If the output instead shows "independent" or "standalone", there may be an issue with the LACP configuration in the physical network which the physical network team would needs to investigate and resolve.