vMotion fails at 68% with the error: The migration exceeded the maximum switchover time of 100 seconds

Products

• VMware vCenter Server

Issue/Introduction

This article describes an issue where powered-on vMotion fails for specific virtual machines with switchover timeout and Module 'Nvman' power on failed errors. The issue is caused by an incompatible Third party IOFilter VM Storage Policy configured at the virtual disk (VMDK) level.

Symptoms:

A subset of virtual machines (typically Domain Controller VMs) fail to migrate between ESXi hosts while other virtual machines migrate successfully.

The vMotion operation consistently fails at approximately 68% with the following errors:

• The destination host reports failure during the VM resume phase(vmkernel,hostd,vmware.log):
  • The migration has exceeded the maximum switchover time of 100 second(s). ESX has preemptively failed the migration to allow the VM to continue running on the source.
  • The VM failed to resume on the destination during early power on.
  • Module 'Nvman' power on failed.
  • VM Action button -> VM polices -> Edit VM storage Policies -> toggel configure per disks shows : "A Datastore does not match current VM policy."


Additional symptoms include:

• Only specific VMs are affected while vMotion succeeds for other VMs.
• ESXi hosts cannot enter Maintenance Mode because the affected VMs cannot be migrated.
• Increasing vmotion.maxSwitchoverSeconds does not resolve the issue. (https://knowledge.broadcom.com/external/article/314376/vmotion-or-storage-vmotion-of-a-vm-fails.html)
• Restarting ESXi management agents or rebooting the ESXi host does not resolve the issue.
• Power-off vMotion works

 

Environment

VMware vCenter server 8.x

Cause

The issue occurs because the affected virtual machines have a Third party IOFilter VM Storage Policy configured on one or more virtual disks (VMDKs), while the datastore or datastore cluster is incompatible with that policy.

Although the datastore itself may be using the Default Storage Policy, vMotion validates the storage policy assigned to each virtual disk.

When the datastore or datastore cluster is incompatible with the configured IOFilter policy, the IOFilter cannot be applied correctly during the vMotion switchover. As a result, the destination ESXi host cannot acquire ownership of the VM files, causing the migration to timeout during the switchover phase.

The root cause is VM Storage Policy incompatibility, not:

• vMotion network latency
• ESXi host configuration
• DPD service
• Switchover timeout configuration
• ESXi management agents

Although the migration reports a switchover timeout, the timeout is a secondary symptom. The underlying failure occurs because the destination host cannot acquire ownership of the VM files when the configured third party IOFilter VM Storage Policy is incompatible with the datastore or datastore cluster.

Resolution

Resolution

Review the VM Storage Policy assigned to the affected virtual disks.

Navigate to:

vCenter → Policies and Profiles → VM Storage Policies

Verify whether the datastore or datastore cluster appears under the Incompatible tab for the configured third party VM Storage Policy. If the datastore cannot support the configured IOFilter policy:

• Engage third party support to make the datastore or datastore cluster compatible with the IOFilter policy.

Or If immediate compatibility with the third party IOFilter VM Storage Policy cannot be established:

• Apply the Default Storage Policy to the affected virtual disks as a workaround. (VM Action button -> VM polices -> Edit VM storage Policies -> toggel configure per disks)

After correcting the Storage Policy assignment, retry the powered-on vMotion.