Unable to migrate VMs from one ESXi host to another ESXi host version 7.x/8.x

Products

• VMware vSphere ESXi
• VMware vCenter Server

Issue/Introduction

• You have a cluster of two or more ESXi hosts
• Your VMs are configured to use Local datastore (or other storage that is not shared by all relevant hosts)
• When attempting to migrate VMs, the migration only sees one ESXi host - the ESXi host on which the VM is currently on
• When attempting to migrate VMs, the migration does not see the intended destination host

Cause

• This is expected behavior if the destination ESXi host does not have access to the VM's datastore(s).
• For VMs to be able to do a compute-only migration between the hosts, they need to share the same datastore (both ESXi hosts involved in the vMotion).

Resolution

Utilize shared storage

Workarounds:

• Storage (only) vMotion the VM(s) on the source ESXi host to a shared datastore and then proceed with vMotion, if you have shared datastore already configured on the ESXi hosts
• Do both Compute and Storage vMotion

Additional Information

Checking ESXi configuration:

1. Click on the ESXi host
2. Click on Datastore tab in the window on the right to check if you have shared datastores configured 

Checking VM configuration:

1. Click on a VM
2. Edit Settings
3. VM Options
4. Expand General Options to see if VMs are using local or shared datastore

Please see documentation below:

• vSphere vMotion Shared Storage Requirements
• vMotion Migration Types