VMware vMotion fails if target host does not meet reservation requirements

Products

• VMware vCenter Server

Issue/Introduction

This article describes how VMware vMotion can fail at 10% if the target host does not have enough resources available to satisfy reserves set on the virtual machine being vMotioned.

Symptoms:

• VMware vMotion fails at 10%
• Cannot vMotion
• vMotion does not work

Environment

VMware VirtualCenter 2.0.x
VMware VirtualCenter 2.5.x
VMware vCenter Server 4.0.x
VMware vCenter Server 4.1.x
VMware vCenter Server 5.0.x

Resolution

Ensure that the virtual machine does not have reservations set that exceed the available resources of the target ESX/ESXi host.

Determining the resources available on the destination ESX/ESXi host

To determine the resources available on the destination host:

1. Open the VMware Infrastructure/vSphere Client and connect to vCenter Server/VirtualCenter.
2. Click the target ESX/ESXi host and click the Configuration tab.
3. Click the Processors section in the Hardware box and record the speed of the processor.
4. Click the Memory section and record the amount of physical memory available to virtual machines.

For more information on how total virtual machine memory usage is calculated, see Understanding Memory Overhead in the Resource Management Guide.

Configuring virtual machine resource usage

To configure the virtual machine resource usage:

1. Right-click the virtual machine and click Edit Settings.
2. Click Resources
3. Click CPU.
4. Click Memory, adjusting reservation values so that they do not exceed available resources.
5. If Advanced Memory or Advanced CPU affinity settings have been configured, disable them.

If the virtual machine has reserves configured that exceed available resources, enough resources must be made available on the target ESX/ESXi host or the reserves must be lowered or removed.

Additional Information

For more information on troubleshooting VMware vMotion failing at 10%, see Diagnosing VMware vMotion failure at 10% (1003734). Understanding and troubleshooting vMotion