vMotion fails to migrate between EVC clusters of ESXi host with the same configuration

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vMotion fails to migrate between EVC clusters of ESXi host with the same configuration

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Article ID: 317715

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Updated On:

Products

VMware vCenter Server

Issue/Introduction

This article provides information to resolve issues with vMotion between ESXi hosts with the same configuration.

Symptoms:

Unable to live vMotion a virtual machine
When trying to migrate, you see error.

com.vmware.vim.vmfeature.cpuid.stibp
com.vmware.vim.vmfeature.cpuid.ibrs
com.vmware.vim.vmfeature.cpuid.ibpb

Cold vMotion a virtual machine is successful.

Note: To resolve CPU incompatibilities, use a cluster with Enhanced vMotion Compatibility (EVC) enabled. See KB article 1003212

Cause

This is a known behavior because of Spectre and Meltdown vulnerability patching.

This issue occurs because the source host has been patched for the Spectre/Meltdown mitigation and the destination hosts attempted have not been patched.

For information on the Spectre and Meltdown vulnerabilities, see:

Resolution

This issue is resolve in vSphere 6.5 Update 2, available at VMware Download .

Note: All ESXi hosts must be updated to at minimum 6.5 Update 2 to resolve this issue.

Workaround:
To workaround this issue, add these options to the virtual machines configure (.vmx) file:
featMask.vm.cpuid.stibp = "Max:0"
featMask.vm.cpuid.ibrs = "Max:0"
featMask.vm.cpuid.ibpb = "Max:0"

Using the vSphere Client, connect to the vCenter Server and locate the affected virtual machine.
Power off the virtual machine.
Right-click the virtual machine and click Edit Settings > VM Options > Advanced > Configuration Parameters - Edit configuration.
Add the below parameters:

featMask.vm.cpuid.stibp = "Max:0"
featMask.vm.cpuid.ibrs = "Max:0"
featMask.vm.cpuid.ibpb = "Max:0"

Click OK and OK, power on the virtual machine and migrate.

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