HCX Migration fails at switchover with error "Failed to instantiate vm. Task state: error"

Products

• VMware HCX

Issue/Introduction

• Bulk migration syncs the VM data to remote location and switch over fails with the following error: "Failed to instantiate vm. Task state: error"
  
  
  
  
  
• /common/logs/admin/app.log shows the following error:
  
  

  2025-11-10 14:04:48.652 UTC [ReplicationTransferService_SvcThread-41906, Ent: HybridityAdmin, , TxId: <UUID>] ERROR c.v.v.h.a.vcenter.VCenterAdapter- Instantiating a VM <VM-Name> failed.
  com.vmware.vim.binding.vim.fault.DatacenterMismatch: The input arguments had entities that did not belong to the same datacenter.

 

Environment

VMware HCX

Cause

Reviewing log messages in /common/logs/admin/app.log leading up to the switch over failure, we can see there was a connection issue to vCenter due to failed authentication:

2025-11-10 14:04:39.774 UTC [ReplicationTransferService_SvcThread-41909, Ent: HybridityAdmin, , TxId: <UUID>] ERROR c.v.v.h.a.vcenter.VcConnection- Error Logging onto VCenter:https://###.###.###.### User:USERNAME_PLACEHOLDER, message: Cannot complete login due to an incorrect user name or password.

Resolution

1. Login to the HCX Appliance Management (VAMI) on port 9443 with "admin" credentials (Example: https://<hcx-connector-fqdn or ip address>:9443)
2. On the "Dashboard", find the "vCenter" tile and click "Manage"
3. On the "vCenter Server" tile click "Edit"
4. Input the username and password for the vCenter Server service account (Example: [email protected]) and click "Save"
5. Go to the "Appliance Summary" tab and stop/start app-engine and web-engine services
6. Retry your migration