Requirements and Limitations for vMotion Without Shared Storage

A virtual machine and its host must meet resource and configuration requirements for the virtual machine files and disks to be migrated with vMotion in the absence of shared storage.

vMotion in an environment without shared storage is subject to the following requirements and limitations:

• The hosts must be licensed for vMotion.
• The hosts must be running ESXi 5.1 or later.
• The hosts must meet the networking requirement for vMotion. See vSphere vMotion Networking Requirements.
• The virtual machines must be properly configured for vMotion. See Virtual Machine Conditions and Limitations for vMotion
• Virtual machine disks must be in persistent mode or be raw device mappings (RDMs). See Storage vMotion Requirements and Limitations.
• The destination host must have access to the destination storage.
• When you move a virtual machine with RDMs and do not convert those RDMs to VMDKs, the destination host must have access to the RDM LUNs.
• Consider the limits for simultaneous migrations when you perform a vMotion migration without shared storage. This type of vMotion counts against the limits for both vMotion and Storage vMotion, so it consumes both a network resource and 16 datastore resources. See Limits on Simultaneous Migrations.