Month: September 2020

Migrating a virtual machine between two different vDS version fails with an error.

Jitendra MishraLeave a comment

What caused this error?

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

You see these errors in the vSphere Web Client similar to:

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.

Why do you see this?

This issue occurs because there are comparisons being made between the vDS on the source and destination for the vMotion operation. The vDS must match. Otherwise, this would mean the destination vDS is not compatible.

How to fix this?

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

To resolve this issue, upgrade your vDS switch with the lower version to match that of the higher one in your infrastructure.

How do we workaround this without vDS upgrade?

  1. vCenter Server 6.5.x and vCenter Server 6.7.x
  2. Log in to the vCenter Server using the HTML5 or vSphere Web Client.
  3. Highlight your vCenter Server name in the left-hand column and then click on the Configure tab on the right.
  4. Go to Advanced Settings and click Edit Settings.
  5. At the bottom of the pop-up window, add the following property in the Name section:

config.migrate.test.NetworksCompatibleOption.AllowMismatchedDVSwitchConfig

  1. Set the value to true.
  2. Click Add.
  3. Click Save.
  4. Re-try the migration.

For vCenter Server 7.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

  1. Set the value to true.
  2. Click Add.
  3. Click Save.
  4. Re-try the migration.

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