Migrating a virtual machine between two different vDS versions

Products

• VMware vSphere ESXi

Issue/Introduction

When attempting to migrate a virtual machine from one vSphere Distributed Switch (vDS) to another, you experience these symptoms:

• You see the below error when selecting the network for the VM on the destination vDS:
  
  The target host doesn’t support the virtual machines current hardware requirements. The destination virtual switch version or type (VDS 7.0.0) is different than the minimum required version or type (VDS 6.6.0) necessary to migrate VM from source virtual switch.

Cause

This issue occurs because there are comparisons being made between the vDS on the source and destination ESXi Hosts/vCenter for the vMotion operation.

vMotion operations between vDS instances that are different versions is not supported.

Resolution

This is an expected behavior when migrating between mixed vSphere Distributed Switch versions.

To resolve this issue:

• Upgrade the vDS with the lower version to match that of the higher one, if possible.
  • Reference: Upgrade a vDS
    • If you're upgrading a vDS that is version 6.5 or lower to 6.6 or higher, please refer to this KB as well:
      • Upgrading to DVS 6.6 known issues
• Alternatively, power-off the VM and then do the migration between the switches (cold migration).

Note: The workaround below should only be used for the vMotion between different DVS versions for migrations between on-prem and VMware Cloud.
***If the below workaround is applied to a hot-migration of a VM between two distributed switches that have different versions, the VM may lose network connectivity.***

Workaround:
To work around this issue:

vCenter Server 6.5.x and vCenter Server 6.7.x

1. Log in to the vCenter Server using the HTML5 or vSphere Web Client.
2. Highlight your vCenter Server name in the left-hand column and then click on the Configure tab on the right.
3. Go to Advanced Settings and click Edit Settings.
4. At the bottom of the pop-up window, add the following property in the Name section:
   
   config.migrate.test.NetworksCompatibleOption.AllowMismatchedDVSwitchConfig
    
5. Set the value to true.
6. Click Add.
7. Click Save.
8. Re-try the migration.

vCenter Server 7.0.x and later

1. Log in to the vCenter Server using the HTML5 or vSphere Web Client.
2. Highlight your vCenter Server name in the left-hand column and then click on the Configure tab on the right.
3. Go to Advanced Settings and click Edit Settings.
4. At the bottom of the pop-up window, add the following property in the Name section: 
   
   config.vmprov.enableHybridMode
    
5. Set the value to true.
6. Click Add.
7. Click Save.
8. Re-try the migration.

Note: For enabling hybrid mode in vCenter, the target DVS version must be at least 6.0.0.

Additional Information

Note: At this time, the workaround does not work if the source vDS is version 7.0.3.

config.vmprov.enableHybridMode = false (default setting)

	Destination vDS version
Source vDS version	6.5.0	6.6.0	7.0.0	7.0.2	7.0.3
6.5.0	✅	❌	❌	❌	❌
6.6.0	❌	✅	❌	❌	❌
7.0.0	❌	❌	✅	❌	❌
7.0.2	❌	❌	❌	✅	❌
7.0.3	❌	❌	❌	❌	✅

config.vmprov.enableHybridMode = true (workaround applied)

	Destination vDS version
Source vDS version	6.5.0	6.6.0	7.0.0	7.0.2	7.0.3
6.5.0	✅	✅	✅	✅	✅
6.6.0	✅	✅	✅	✅	✅
7.0.0	✅	✅	✅	✅	✅
7.0.2	✅	✅	✅	✅	✅
7.0.3	❌	❌	❌	❌	✅

For more information regarding vMotion networking requirements:

• Understand vMotion networking requirements

For more information about the differences between a hot and cold migration:

• Hot and Cold Migrations