We are upgrading server hardware and using a temporary host as a swing box. I was able to cold migrate VMs to the swing box with no problems. Attempting to move the largest VM has failed several times. It is big. I know I need a really big maintenance window to complete the migration. But failing during the migration isn't helping.
Source host: ESXi v4.0 (with current updates)
Dest host: ESXi v5.1.0
We attempted to upgrade the source to v5.1.0, but failed. Update Manager wouldn't scan the host. Not a huge problem was we can just reinstall the host after the hardware upgrades as a fresh install. I mention it, just in case there may be a clue here.
The VM is big. Four vdmk files. 200 GB O/S. 50 GB paging drive. A pair of 2 TB drives which are striped in the O/S (Win 2008 R2).
Initially the migration failed because the paging file happened to have the same file name as one of the paired drives. It was in a separate datastore, so we never noticed the filenames before. But the swingbox has only one datastore, so when we attempted to merge the files, it was displeased when the same name showed up. We manually renamed the paging drive (vmdk) -- since I really don't care if I lose that file or not.
The maintenance window was closing but I restarted the migration to make sure there weren't any other issues which I could resolve during mx window time. The transfer was proceeding very well (about three hours into the transfer) when I canceled it because there wouldn't be enough time to complete the migration. No errors.
Next mx window I started the migration again. OS transferred with no error. First of the paired drives failed with the following error:
Could not complete network copy of /vmfs/volumes/....vmdk
I really love such descriptive errors.
Tried the migration again. Same problem. Tried to manually copy each vmdk to the swingbox. The first of the paired drives fails. Doesn't even try to copy it. Coincidence that this drive was successfully migrating earlier in the day before I canceled it? I don't know.
I have no problem restarting the VM on the source host. I just can't seem to migrate it (or copy it) to the swingbox.
Where do I start looking for answers?
BTW... The vCenter is located in a VM on the swingbox.