vMotion to ESXi hosts without a root password fails

Products

• VMware vSphere ESXi

Issue/Introduction

ESXi hosts with a blank root password cannot have VMs migrated to them. The following message is present in the dialogue for the impacted hosts, despite the time being properly synchronized:

Too large clock skew was detected. Relative time skew 2508434800 between source and destination hosts is greater than five minutes.

Environment

vSphere (vCenter and ESXi)

Cause

vCenter seems to be unable to properly manage and poll the host status due to a blank root password.

Resolution

1. Set a root password on the ESXi host(s) through an SSH session using the passwd command.
2. Reconnect the host to vCenter and enter the new password when prompted.
3. Test vMotion capability.