The vMotion failed because the destination host did not receive data from the source host on the vMotion network.

Products

• VMware vSphere ESXi
• VMware vCenter Server

Issue/Introduction

• The vMotion is failing at 20% with the following error:

The vMotion failed because the destination host did not receive data from the source host on the vMotion network.
Please check your vMotion network settings and physical network configuration and ensure they are correct.
Migration [176293405:xxxxxx] failed to connect to remote host <10.10.x.x> from host <192.168.x.x>: Network unreachable.
vMotion migration [176293405:xxxxxx] failed to create a connection with remote host <10.10.x.x>: The ESX hosts failed to connect over the VMotion network
The vMotion migrations failed because the ESX hosts were not able to connect over the vMotion network. Check the vMotion network settings and physical network configuration.

• The vMotion service was enabled on both the vMotion and management vmkernel adapters on the source and destination ESXi hosts.

 

Environment

• VMware vCenter Server
• VMware vSphere ESX

Cause

The vMotion service was enabled on both the vMotion and management vmkernel adapters on the source and destination ESXi hosts.

During vMotion, the source host attempted to connect from vmk0 to the vmk1 (vMotion kernel adapter) on the destination host. However, the vMotion failed because these two adapters were on different subnets with no underlying network connectivity between them.

Resolution

If enabling the vMotion service on both the vMotion and management vmkernel adapters was not intended, you should maintain a dedicated kernel adapter for vMotion.

Uncheck the vMotion service on the `vmk0` of both the source and destination hosts; vMotion should then complete successfully on `vmk1` (the dedicated vMotion kernel adapters) on both ESXi hosts.