vMotion fails with the error: The migration was cancelled because the amount of changing memory for the VM was greater than the available network bandwidth, meaning the migration was not making forward progress

Products

• VMware vSphere ESXi

Issue/Introduction

Symptoms:

• Cannot vMotion a virtual machine
• Performing a vMotion of a virtual machine fails
• You see the error:
  
  The migration was cancelled because the amount of changing memory for the VM was greater than the available network bandwidth, meaning the migration was not making forward progress. Please attempt the migration again when the VM is not as busy or more network bandwidth is available.

Cause

This issue occurs when the amount of changing memory for the virtual machine is greater than the available network bandwidth.

Note: Changing memory refers to the amount of memory that has changed since the initial copy.

Resolution

To resolve this issue, retry the vMotion operation when the virtual machine is not busy or when more network bandwidth is available.

Factors to consider:

• When the vMotion network shares a physical NIC with another busy portgroup, vMotion may be unable to utillize the full bandwidth of the NIC.
• Because network design can impact this issue, review the values of the Traffic Shaping of the vMotion port group for accuracy.