vMotion from Higher to Lower EVC Cluster May Succeed or Fail Depending on the VM

Products

• VMware vCenter Server

Issue/Introduction

It's generally expected that vMotion from higher to lower evc cluster would fail, but they succeeded for some VMs.

Environment

VMware vSphere 

Cause

It could happen because of lower hw version configured for VM.

Based on hw version, available cpu features for VM is limited. Thus that, VM configured with low hw version can be migrated from higher to lower evc cluster.

Resolution

We recommend configuring same EVC level for clusters if you need to migrate VM between clusters, since VM configured newer hw version won't be able to migrate from higher to lower EVC cluster.