HCX Bulk Migration Extended Customization Options Failing for RHEL 8

Products

• VMware HCX

Issue/Introduction

When migrating Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 8 virtual machines between vCenter environments using HCX Bulk Migration, Guest OS Customization fails.

While the migration and replication phases complete successfully, Extended Guest Customization (including IP reconfiguration and post-customization script execution) fails specifically during the cutover phase.

The following extract from the guest OS /var/log/vmware-imc/toolsDeployPkg.log shows repeatable failure:

 DEBUG: Result: [deployPkg] enable-custom-scripts UNSET
...
 ERROR: User defined script execution is not enabled. 
To enable it, please have vmware tools v10.1.0 or later installed and execute:
'vmware-toolbox-cmd config set deployPkg enable-custom-scripts true'

Customization command failed with exitcode: 6
Deployment failed. The forked off process returned error code.
PackageDeployPkg failed in DeployPkg_DeployPackageFromFile

Environment

 HCX Version: 4.11
 Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8

Resolution

Currently, Extended Guest Customization features are not supported for RHEL 8 during Bulk Migration workflows.

For a list of supported operating systems, please refer to the official documentation Guest OS Customization with Bulk Migration