Virtual machine disks become corrupted after storage vMotion between two different arrays

Products

• VMware vSphere ESXi

Issue/Introduction

• A virtual machine is migraged from one datastore, on one array, to another datastore, on another array.
• After the Storage vMotion, the VM does not power on and boot disk is corrupted.
• Migrating the same virtual machine to another datastore on the same array does not corrupt the disks.   
• Hardware acceleration (VAAI) is enabled in the cluster.

Environment

VMware vSphere ESXi (All versions)

VMware vCenter Server (All versions)

 

Cause

This issue arises if the VAAI XCOPY data copy is verified by the storage arrays, but the mapping between blocks on each array is not consistently implemented.

Resolution

1. Disable hardware acceleration on each host in the cluster.
2. Run the storage vMotion.
3. Re-enable hardware acceleration on all of the hosts.

Additional Information

- Disabling the VAAI functionality in ESXi

- Japanese KB: 2つの異なるアレイ間でストレージvMotionを実行した後、仮想マシンのディスクが破損する