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vCenter Server 4.0 VMotion operation fails with the error: Insufficient disk space on datastore

Symptoms

Migrating virtual machines between two ESX hosts that store the virtual machine swap files in different locations, may exhibit these symptoms:

A VMotion operation fails
When attempting to migrate, you see the error:

Insufficient disk space on datastore '<Datastore Name>'.

Resolution

Cause

If you are migrating virtual machines between two ESX hosts that store the virtual machine swap files in different locations, vCenter 4.0 may require enough disk space to store two full sized copies of the virtual machine swap file. If there is not enough space in the datastore, you receive this error.

For example, a virtual machine configured with 8 GB of memory and a 2 GB memory reservation will require a 6 GB swap file. If this virtual machine resided on an ESX host that stores swap files on local storage and was being migrated to an ESX host that stores swap files with on a shared Datastore, the operation may require twice the size of swap file.

A vMotion might also fail due to lack of disk space if you are migrating a virtual machine between two ESX hosts that:

Do not have an explicit host-local swap configuration (default)
Have an explicit host-local swap location, pointing to the same datastore on both hosts (uncommon)

This issue has been resolved in vCenter Server 4.0 Update 2. For more information, see VMware vCenter Server 4.0 Update 2 Release Notes.

Resolution

To resolve this issue, you must ensure that you have adequate amount of space on the datastores. To free up space, consider:

Increasing capacity
Moving virtual machines to other storage
Adding additional datastores
Removing old snapshots
Cleaning up VMware VMFS

For more information about these operations, see Troubleshooting a datastore or VMFS volume that is full or near capacity(1003412).

Workaround

Since only the non-reserved memory uses the swap file, you can temporarily increase the memory reservation of the virtual machine to match the allocated memory while conducting the vMotion.

For more information on Storage VMotion and storage space, see Storage VMotion operation fails with the error: Insufficient disk space on datastore (1008171).

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