vMotion or Storage vMotion of a VM fails with the error: The migration has exceeded the maximum switchover time of 100 second(s)

Products

• VMware vCenter Server
• VMware vSphere ESXi

Issue/Introduction

Symptoms:

• vMotion of a virtual machine fails
• Storage vMotion of a virtual machine fails
• vMotion or Storage vMotion fails at the last stage
• You see the error:
  
  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. To avoid this failure, either increase the maximum allowable switchover time or wait until the VM is performing a less intensive workload.

Environment

VMware vSphere ESXi 6.0
VMware vSphere ESXi 6.5
VMware vSphere ESXi 6.7
VMware vSphere ESXi 7.0.x
VMware vSphere ESXi 8.0.x

Cause

During vMotion, this issue occurs if the source host is unable to send the checkpoint data of the virtual machine and memory pages within the default time of maxSwitchoverSeconds(100 seconds) to the destination host.

 

This happens because of network bandwidth and latency related issues. By default, timeout value of vmotion.maxSwitchoverSeconds is 100 seconds.

During Storage vMotion, this issue can occur if the host is unable to copy the swap file activity of the virtual machine within a default time of 100 seconds from the source datastore to the destination datastore. It can also occur if the source datastore or the destination datastore are having any performance related issues because of heavy I/O activity.

Resolution

If this issue occurs during vMotion, ensure that there are no network related performance issues between the hosts.

For more information, see:

• The vSphere vMotion networking requirements section in the vCenter Server and Host Management Guide.
• Understand vMotion networking requirements

In this case, to work around this issue, increase the value of the vmotion.maxSwitchoverSeconds parameter of the virtual machine from 100 to a larger number. The maximum value being 135.

Process to increase the value of the vmotion.maxSwitchoverSeconds parameter of VM:

You can modify the vmotion.maxSwitchoverSeconds option using the vCenter web Client or ESXi Host Client:

1. Login to vCenter web Client or ESXi Host Client
2. Locate the virtual machine in the Inventory.
3. Power off the virtual machine.
4. Right-click the virtual machine and click Edit Settings.
5. Click the VM Options tab.
6. Select the Advanced.

7. Click the Edit Configuration button.
   
   Note: The Configuration Parameters button is disabled when the virtual machine is powered on.
    
8. From the Configuration Parameters window, click Add Configuration Params.

9. In the Name field, enter the parameter name:
   
   vmotion.maxSwitchoverSeconds
    
10. In the Value field, enter the new timeout value in seconds (for example: 135).
11. Click OK .
12. Power on the virtual machine.

Process to modify vmotion.maxSwitchoverSeconds by editing the. vmx file manually:

To modify the vmotion.maxSwitchoverSeconds option by editing the. vmx file manually follow the steps below:

 

1. Locate and edit the. vmx file of the virtual machine.
   For more information, see Tips for editing a .vmx file.
2. To increase the timeout value to 135 seconds, modify this line of. vmx file of the virtual machine:
   vmotion.maxSwitchoverSeconds = 135

Note: To edit a virtual machines configuration file, you need to power off the virtual machine, remove it from Inventory, make the changes to the vmx file, add the virtual machine back to inventory, and then power on the virtual machine again OR follow the article Reloading a vmx file without removing the virtual machine from inventory

If the issue occurs during Storage vMotion, ensure that there are no storage related performance issues on source and the destination datastores. Sometimes the failure can happen if the virtual machine has many virtual disks.

 

In this case, modify the fsr.maxSwitchoverSeconds option; see Using Storage vMotion to migrate a virtual machine with many disks timeout .