Error: "Fast-provisioned VMs cannot be placed at the disk level" when creating a migration job for vApp with multiple VMs

Products

• VMware Cloud Director

Issue/Introduction

• Migrating a vApp with multiple VMs between two VMware Cloud Director (VCD) instances results in below error seen in VCD UI Recent tasks:
  • "Fast-provisioned VMs cannot be placed at the disk level"
• VCDA is being used to migrate the vApp between the two VCD instances
• vApp with only one VM works fine or when migrating one VM at a time
• Org VDC is fast provisioned

Environment

• VMware Cloud Director 10.6
• VMware Cloud Director Availability 4.7

Cause

The issue is because the VDC is fast provisioned, which means all disks of a VM along with vmx file should stay on a single datastore while the vmx/vm disks of existing VMs are on a separate datastore and that's why this error occurs

Resolution

To resolve the issue, either disable fast provisioning on the Org VDC or move disks/vmx file of the existing VMs to a single datastore