vMotion fails at 21% with error 195887371

How to troubleshoot vMotion issues

Troubleshooting vMotion issues is in most cases a matter of networking issues. I will demonstrate in this case how to trace down the problem and how to find possible culprits.

What’s the problem?

Initiating a host vMotion between esx1 and esx2 passes all pre-checks, but then fails at 21% progress.

Migrate virtual machine:Failed waiting for data. Error 195887371. The ESX hosts failed to connect over the VMotion network.

See the error stack for details on the cause of this problem.
Time: 07.01.2018 19:08:08
Target: WSUS
vCenter Server: vc
Error Stack
Migration [167797862:1515348488969364] failed to connect to remote host <192.168.45.246> from host <10.0.100.102>: Timeout.
vMotion migration [167797862:1515348488969364] vMotion migration [167797862:1515348488969364] stream thread failed to connect to the remote host <192.168.45.246>: The ESX hosts failed to connect over the VMotion network
The vMotion migrations failed because the ESX hosts were not able to connect over the vMotion network. Check the vMotion network settings and physical network configuration. 
Migration [167797862:1515348488969364] failed to connect to remote host <10.0.100.102> from host <192.168.45.246>: Timeout.
vMotion migration [167797862:1515348488969364] failed to create a connection with remote host <10.0.100.102>: The ESX hosts failed to connect over the VMotion network
Failed waiting for data. Error 195887371. The ESX hosts failed to connect over the VMotion network.

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Using VM tags to manage backup SLAs

Agile backup job assignment with VM-tags and Veeam Backup

Organizing VMs in backup jobs can be a tedious task. Especially when there is a larger number of VMs and multiple jobs. It might happen that you miss out a VM for a job, or have it doubled.

To check whether a VM is backed up by the corresponding jobs, you either have to go through the settings of every single job or use smart tools like Veeam-One.

There are a couple of ways to add VMs to a backup job. You can choose single VMs by name, or select an entire VM folder, resource-pool or datastore. But one of the most sophisticated and versatile methods is to leverage VM-tags for selection.

What are tags?

A tag behaves like a label or a sticker that you put on a VM. It defines a property or a membership of a given VM. Think of a tag that marks a VM for daily backup. A second tag might mark a VM for hourly or weekly backup. You don’t have to adjust your backup jobs twice a week to remove or add new virtual machines. With VM-tags you don’t have to touch backup jobs at all. Just tell the job once to select all VMs with a specific tag and you’re done.

Even checking job membership for a VM is easier with tags. Just have a look at its tags.

How?

I will now show a simple example how to use tagged VMs in combination with Veeam Backup & Replication.

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VMware releases patches for Meltdown and Spectre bug

Important patches available

VMware has issued Security Advisories for the recent Meltdown and Spectre bugs to address side-channel analysis due to speculative execution.

I recommend reading a post by Anton Gostev (Veeam), which i reposted yesterday.

It includes patches for VC, ESXi, Workstation and Fusion.

VMSA-2018-0004

VMware vSphere, Workstation and Fusion updates add Hypervisor-Assisted Guest Remediation for speculative execution issue.

There’s also an update to VMSA-2018-0002

VMSA-2018-0002.1

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