VMware VMotion fails if target host does not meet reservation requirements
Symptoms
VMware VMotion fails at 10%
Cannot VMotion
VMotion does not work
Purpose
This article describes how VMware VMotion can fail at 10% if the target host does not have enough resources available to satisfy reserves set on the virtual machine being VMotioned.
Resolution
Ensure that the Virtual Machine does not have reservations set that exceed the available resources of the target ESX Server.
Determining the resources available on the destination ESX host
To determine the resources available on the destination host:
Open the VMware Infrastructure Client (VI Client) and connect to the VirtualCenter Server
Click on the target ESX host and click on the Configuration tab
Click on the Processors section in the Hardware box and record the speed of the processor.
Click on the Memory section and record the amount of physical memory available to virtual machines.
For more information on how total virtual machine memory usage is calculated, see the Resource Management Guide -- Understanding Memory Overhead:
For ESX Server 3.5, ESX Server 3i version 3.5, the document is available in HTML and PDF.
For ESX Server 3.0.1, the document is available in HTML and PDF.
Configuring virtual machine resource usage
To configure the virtual machine resource usage:
Right-click on the virtual machine and click Edit Settings.
Click Resources
Click CPU.
Click Memory, adjusting reservation values so that they do not exceed available resources.
If Advanced Memory or Advanced CPU affinity settings have been configured, disable them.
If the virtual machine has reserves configured that exceed available resources, enough resources must be made available on the target ESX host or the reserves must be lowered or removed.
