Storage vMotion fails with the error: Failed to copy one or more disks

Products

• VMware vSphere ESXi

Issue/Introduction

Symptoms:

• Cannot perform a Storage vMotion operation
• Storage vMotion initiated from the vSphere Client fails
• You see these errors:
  
  
  • Failed to copy one or more disks. Canceling Storage vMotion.
    Cannot copy source (/vmfs/volumes/SourceVolume/VM/VM.vmdk) to destination disk (/vmfs/volumes/DestinationVolume/VM/VM.vmdk): Device or resource busy
    DM copy operation failed to copy 1 extents (Error: Busy).Bytes transferred: 0 Extents transferred: 0
    DM copy operation failed to copy 1 extents (Error: Busy).Bytes transferred: 0 Extents transferred: 0
    
    
  • Failed to copy one or more disks. Canceling Storage vMotion.
    Cannot copy source (/vmfs/volumes/SourceVolume/VM/VM.vmdk) to destination disk (/vmfs/volumes/DestinationVolume /VM/VM.vmdk): There is not enough space on the file system for the selected operation
    DM copy operation failed to copy 1 extents (Error: No space left on device).Bytes transferred: 0 Extents transferred: 0
    DM copy operation failed to copy 1 extents (Error: No space left on device).Bytes transferred: 0 Extents transferred: 0

Environment

VMware vSphere ESXi 5.1
VMware vSphere ESXi 5.5
VMware vSphere ESXi 5.0

Cause

This issue occurs if the ESX host is unable to move the virtual disk of the virtual machine from the source datastore to the destination datastore during the Storage vMotion operation.

This is due to intermittent SAN or network issues such as unreachable storage or high storage latencies on the datastores related to the Storage vMotion operation.

This can also happen if the destination datastore does not have enough free capacity to accommodate the virtual machine.

Resolution

To resolve this issue, ensure that there are no problems related to the storage or network in your environment.

For more information, see:

• Troubleshooting LUN connectivity issues (1003955)
• Troubleshooting fibre channel storage connectivity (1003680)
• Troubleshooting ESX and ESXi host connectivity to iSCSI arrays using software initiators (1003952)
• Troubleshooting iSCSI array connectivity issues (1003681)
• Troubleshooting VMFS-3 datastore issues (1003964)
• Troubleshooting connectivity issues to an NFS datastore (1003967)
  

If the problem is due to insufficient data store capacity, either create necessary space in the data store by migrating other virtual machines from this data store or increase the data store capacity. For more information, see the Increasing VMFS Datastore Capacity section in the vSphere 6.0 Storage Guide.

Additional Information

When Storage vMotion fails, the /var/log/vmkernel.log file on the ESXi host contains logs indicating the nature of intermittent SAN issues.

For more information on the error codes and conditions, see:

• Understanding SCSI host-side NMP errors/conditions (1029039)
• Understanding SCSI device/target NMP errors/conditions (1030381)

Troubleshooting fibre channel storage connectivity
ESXi/ESX host reports VMFS heap warnings when hosting virtual machines that collectively use 4 TB or 20 TB of virtual disk storage
VMware Storage vMotion fails at 21% with the error: Storage VMotion failed to copy one or more of the VM's disks
Storage vMotion が次のエラーで失敗する：1 つまたは複数のディスクのコピーに失敗しました (Failed to copy one or more disks)
Storage vMotion 失败，并显示错误：无法复制一个或多个磁盘 (Failed to copy one or more disks)