HCX migration fails with "Network I/O admission control (NIOC) check failed for Ethernet device(s)"

Products

• VMware HCX

Issue/Introduction

HCX bulk migration failed for some VMs during the power-on event with the following error.

PowerOn task 'task-####' for Virtual Machine 'vm-####' failed due to'(vim.fault.GenericVmConfigFault) { faultCause = null, faultMessage =
(vmodl.LocalizableMessage[com.vmware.vim.binding.impl.vmodl.LocalizableMessagelmpl@######,com.vmware.vim.binding.impl.vmodl.LocalizableMessagelmpl@######,com.vmware.vim.binding.impl.vmodl.LocalizableMessagelmpl@5###### ],
reason = Network I/O admission control (NIOC) check failed for Ethernet
device(s): 1(bitMap). Check the host network configuration for available
bandwidth for reservation. Please try these actions manually

The destination host's Portset is in ENS poll mode. This can be confirmed by running the CLI command on the target ESXi host: esxcfg-nics -e

 

 

Environment

VMware HCX 

VMware NSX 

Cause

The failure occurs because the ENS (Enhanced Network Stack) high-performance data path has a hard limit on the number of logical ports it can support in polling mode. The number of ports connected to the ENS-driven vSwitch exceeds the supported limit of 108 ports. When this limit is reached, NIOC admission control prevents the VM from powering on to ensure guaranteed network performance for existing workloads.

Resolution

Follow resolution outlined in the KB Article  ID#417843

Workaround: 

vMotion impacted VM to another Esxi host where the number of ports connected to the ENS poll mode vSwitch  does not exceeds 108