Ghosted Device Cards on Windows VMs After HCX vMotion/RAV Migration

Products

• VMware HCX

Issue/Introduction

• Windows virtual machines migrated via HCX Replication Assisted vMotion (RAV) or standard vMotion exhibit "ghosted" or duplicate hardware devices (specifically NICs/Network Cards) within the Guest OS after a reboot or hardware scan.
• This occurs consistently across migrated Windows workloads.

Symptoms:

• Windows Device Manager shows ghosted/hidden devices and PCI numbers change.

• Network configuration is lost or reassigned to a new "ghost" adapter.

• Issue is specific to Windows VMs with EFI firmware and a source Hardware Version > 21.

• The source VM started out on a Hardware Version < 21.

Environment

 

• Product: VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF), VMware HCX

• Component: IX Appliance, Mobility Agent

• Guest OS: Microsoft Windows (All versions using EFI)

• Hardware Version: 21 and above (Source side)

 

Cause

• The issue is caused by a change in the Motherboard Layout during the migration process.
• When HCX (or vCenter) executes the CreateVM API to construct the VM specification on the destination, the motherboard_layout property from the source "running config" is not explicitly carried over.
• For EFI-based VMs, the destination vCenter defaults the new VM to the ACPI (Advanced Configuration and Power Interface) layout.
• Windows perceives this as a hardware change, leading to the re-enumeration of devices and the "ghosting" of previous hardware entries (PCI Tree changes).

Resolution

This will be resolved in a future release of HCX. This KB will be updated when the release is known. 

If you believe you have encountered this issue, please open a case with Broadcom and provide the following logs:

• Source/Destination vCenter, HCX Manager logs (with DB dump and Service-Mesh selected).
• Source VM VMX file.