vMotion of VM fails with error: "Timed out waiting for migration data"

Products

• VMware vSphere ESXi

Issue/Introduction

Performing a vMotion of a virtual machine fails with below error at any time during the vMotion task execution:

Migration to host Host_IP failed with error Connection closed by remote host, possibly due to timeout (195887167).
Timed out waiting for migration data.

Environment

• VMware vSphere ESXi 5.0
• VMware vSphere ESXi 5.1
• VMware vSphere ESXi 6.0
• VMware vSphere ESXi 5.5
• VMware vSphere ESXi 7.0
• VMware vSphere ESXi 8.0

Cause

This issue occurs due to network connectivity of hosts. During vMotion, the source host transfers the memory pages of the virtual machine to the destination host. If the destination host does not receive any data from the source host for a default period of 120 seconds, vMotion fails with this error.

Resolution

Check the vMotion network configuration.

To check the health of the vMotion network:

1. Check for IP address conflicts on the vMotion network. Each host in the cluster should have a vMotion vmknic, assigned a unique IP address.
2. Check for packet loss over the vMotion network. Try having the source host ping (vmkping) the destination host's vMotion vmknic IP address for the duration of the vMotion.
3. Check that each vMotion vmkernel port group have the same security settings. A security mismatch causes a vMotion operation to fail.
   
   For example, a failure occurs if a source vmkernel portgroup is set to allow promiscuous mode and the destination vmkernel portgroup is set to disallow promiscuous mode.
   
   Note: To test connectivity using the vmkping command when Jumbo Frames are configured, run the command with the -s option. For more information on running the vmkping command, see Testing VMkernel network connectivity with the vmkping command (1003728)
   
   Check for connectivity between the two hosts. Try having the source host ping (vmkping) the destination host's vMotion vmknic IP address.