Troubleshooting migration compatibility error: Device is a SCSI controller engaged in bus-sharing in vSphere 5.x

Products

• VMware vCenter Server

Issue/Introduction

Symptoms:

• VMware vMotion migration fails.
• VMware vMotion migration fails to start.
• When performing a vMotion migration, you see a compatibility error similar to:
  
  Unable to migrate from <source server> to <destination server>: Virtual machine is configured to use a device that prevents migration: Device '<device>' is a SCSI controller engaged in bus-sharing.
   
• VMware Storage vMotion migration fails.
• VMware Storage vMotion migration fails to start.
• When performing a VMware Storage vMotion migration, you see a compatibility error similar to:
  
  Virtual machine is configured to use a device that prevents the operation: Device 'SCSI controller X' is a SCSI controller engaged in bus-sharing.
Device 'SCSI controller X' is a SCSI controller engaged in bus-sharing.

Environment

VMware VirtualCenter 2.0.x
VMware vCenter Server 5.1.x
VMware vCenter Server 4.0.x
VMware vCenter Server 5.0.x
VMware vCenter Server 5.5.x
VMware vCenter Server 4.1.x
VMware VirtualCenter 2.5.x

Cause

This issue occurs if you have a SCSI controller in use in a virtual machine, which has the bus-sharing mode changed to either virtual or physical. This configuration is used in virtual machines that are running Microsoft Cluster Services (MSCS).

Resolution

VMware does not permit vMotion or Storage vMotion migrations when a virtual machine is using SCSI bus-sharing. This includes Oracle RAC and MSCS virtual machines located on Storage DRS datastore clusters.

vMotion of MSCS clustered virtual machines is supported in limited conditions.

Pre-requisites for vMotion support:

• vMotion is supported only for a cluster of virtual machines across physical hosts (CAB) with pass-through RDMs.

• The vMotion network must be a 10Gbps Ethernet link. 1Gbps Ethernet link for vMotion of MSCS virtual machines is not supported.

• vMotion is supported for Windows Server 2008 SP2 and above releases. Windows Server 2003 is not supported.
• The MSCS cluster heartbeat time-out must be modified to allow 10 missed heartbeats.
• The virtual hardware version for the MSCS virtual machine must be version 11 and later .

For More information see: vMotion support for MSCS  

To work around this issue, VMware recommends migrating a virtual machine that is participating in SCSI bus-sharing by powering down the virtual machine that resulted in the error message and performing a cold migration to the new host. For more information on cold migrations, see Cold Migrations from the vSphere 5 documentation Center.

For more information on Oracle RAC, see Appendix A of the Oracle Databases on VMware RAC Deployment Guide.

For information on specific virtual machine configurations which can prevent migration of a virtual machine with vMotion, see Overview of migration compatibility error messages (1003684)

Additional Information

Overview of migration compatibility error messages
对迁移兼容性错误进行故障排除：设备是参与总线共享的 SCSI 控制器
移行の互換性エラー「デバイスは、バス共有実行の SCSI コントローラです」のトラブルシューティング