Cross vCenter Migration

The activated vCenter migration configuration allows to migrate virtual machines between non-linked vCenters which are accessible for each other through the network.

vCenter migration requires Network migration to be activated.

Note: vCenter migration is disabled by default. Using this feature may not be safe for an environment. Do not enable this feature without checking if the environment has any vCenter migration limitations or does not satisfy requirements of the cross vCenter migration.

Product limitations for the current release:

• There is no capability in the product to identify encrypted virtual machines. Thus, the migration of encrypted virtual machines is not supported.
• Only powered off virtual machines can be migrated across vCenter Servers.

The migration of a linked VM results in creation of a full VM in a new (target) vCenter so it requires more disk space on datastores of the vCenter than the VM consumes in the source vCenter.

The migration of a parent VM results in keeping the copy of VMDK files used by its linked clones on datastores of the source vCenter

vSphere limitations and requirements for the cross vCenter migration can be found in the official vSphere documentation. The most important ones:

• Existing requirements for cross vCenter migration can be found in the knowledge base article 2106952 and in the official documentation.
• Encrypted vSphere vMotion is described on Encrypted vSphere vMotion.
• The target vCenter may be incompatible with the migrating virtual machine hardware. The compatibility matrix is available in the knowledge base article 2007240.