Migrate Option Greyed Out in vSphere UI for Cloud Director Availability Managed VMs

Products

• VMware vSphere ESXi
• VMware Live Recovery

Issue/Introduction

• Virtual machines (VMs) in the destination site managed by VMware Cloud Director Availability (VCDA) cannot be migrated in the vSphere Client because the Migrate option is greyed out.
• Trying to storage migrate some VMs as the datastore where the replica or the Replication Tracking VMs (RT VMs) managed by VCDA resides is at or near 100% capacity.
• Checking the VM's disabled methods reveals RelocateVM_Task is inactive.
• Standard Storage vMotion or Cold Migration is unavailable.

Environment

• VMware vSphere ESXi 8.0.x
• VMware vCenter 8.0.x
• VMware Cloud Director Availability 4.7.x

Cause

This is an expected behaviour and occurs because VCDA sets a protection flag on Replication Tracking VMs to prevent manual migrations that could break the replication chain or metadata synchronization. When a VM is in an active replication state, vCenter disables the relocation methods in the destination site.

Resolution

To move these virtual machines to a different datastore, perform the migration through the VCDA interface rather than vCenter Server.

1. Log in to the VMware Cloud Director Availability Provider Portal.
2. Locate the affected replication under Outgoing or Incoming Replications.
3. Select the VM and click Settings > Storage Settings.
4. Change the Storage Policy or select a new Target Datastore.
5. VCDA will initiate a managed relocation to the new storage, clearing the greyed-out state during the process.