Error: "Device is a SCSI controller engaged in bus-sharing" during VM migration

Products

• VMware vSphere ESX 6.x
• VMware vSphere ESX 7.x
• VMware vCenter Server 6.0
• VMware vCenter Server 7.0

Issue/Introduction

• 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.

Cause

This issue occurs if you have a virtual machine that has a SCSI controller with bus-sharing mode set to virtual, or under certain unsupported conditions, with bus-sharing mode set to physical. This configuration could be used in virtual machines that are running Windows Server Failover Cluster (WSFC).

Note: It is not recommended to use virtual SCSI bus-sharing while hosting WSFC on VMware vSphere.

Note: vMotion of a virtual machine hosting clustering software such as WSFC or Oracle RAC with physical SCSI bus-sharing is supported under certain requirements, and you will not see the above error message if those requirements are met. For an explanation of the requirements for your chosen clustering solution, refer to the vMotion guidelines in these articles:

• Microsoft Windows Server Failover Clustering (WSFC) with shared disks on VMware vSphere 6.x: Guidelines for supported configurations

Resolution

vSphere does not permit Storage vMotion when a virtual machine is using SCSI bus-sharing, or vMotion when a virtual machine is using virtual SCSI bus-sharing. To work around this issue, VMware recommends migrating such a virtual machine by powering it down first and then performing a cold migration to the new host and/or datastore(s).

Cold migrations of disks configured with bus-sharing require all virtual machines using those disks, such as other WSFC nodes, be powered off. After migrating, ensure that all other virtual machines that were using the migrated disks are updated with the new shared disk locations, otherwise they will fail to power on.

Best Practices Guide for Oracle Workloads

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