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When I tried to Storage vMotion a VM to another LUN I got an “operation timed out error”:

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After analyzing the vpxd.log, I found the following lines:

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The best part I found out, is that the VM was rolled back to it’s old location without losing data or getting corrupt.

This problem is documented in KB1010045. The following solution will resolve the timeout problem:

Increase the Storage VMotion fsr.maxSwitchoverSeconds setting in the virtual machine configuration file to a larger value.

The default is 100 seconds.

To modify fsr.maxSwitchoverSeconds:

  1. Right-click the virtual machine and click Edit Settings.
  2. Click the Options > Advanced > General.
  3. Click Configuration Parameters.
  4. From the Configuration Parameters window, click Add Row.
  5. For the Name field,  fsr.maxSwitchoverSeconds and for the Value field enter the new timeout value.
  6. Click OK twice to save.
  7. Restart the virtual machine for the changes to take effect.

You don’t want to change this by hand, so I created a PowerCLI script which will set the fsr.maxSwitchoverSeconds to 300 seconds for all your VM’s:

$vms = Get-View -ViewType VirtualMachine | where {-not $_.config.template}

    $vmConfigSpec = New-Object VMware.Vim.VirtualMachineConfigSpec
      
    $extra = New-Object VMware.Vim.optionvalue
    $extra.Key="fsr.maxSwitchoverSeconds"
    $extra.Value="300"

    $vmConfigSpec.extraconfig += $extra
    

foreach($vm in $vms){
    $vm.ReconfigVM($vmConfigSpec)
}

After changing the value to 300 seconds, I was able to Storage vMotion the VM.

Published by afokkema

10 thoughts on “vSphere: Storage vMotion Fails with a Timeout”

  1. Pingback: Tweets die vermelden vSphere: Storage vMotion Fails with a Timeout « ICT-Freak.nl -- Topsy.com
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  3. Is it ok to assume this script won’t harm live VM’s and guests in my production environment? I have to shut down the VM’s to make this change manually. Someone recommended I edit the vmx files directly but I was waved away from that as I’m told it’s a good way to crash your VMs.

    Reply

    1. I used this script in a production environment for three times now, and it never gave any trouble. But just to be sure, test the script in a lab to see what it does. This method isn’t supported by VMware but it solved my problem.

      Good luck and let me know.

  4. Fails.

    Property ‘extraconfig’ Cannot be found on this object; make sure it exists and is settable.

    I’m going to make sure I didn’t bone up the script when I copied it.

    Reply

  6. Hi,

    i would have one question for this script.

    does it need a reboot of the vm to apply the setting after executing the script?

    thx

    Markus

    Reply

    1. I also had this same issue with a storage vmotion (in combination with thin provisioning). The storage vmotion worked fine for more than 200 VM’s and suddenly it ran into timeouts. I used the solution as described above.
      To answer to the quesion of Marcus: you don’t need to reboot after the execution of the script.

      Wim.

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  8. Reblogged this on Jesse's Blog and commented:
    I was just about to write my own PowerCLI script to update the timeout setting across multiple hosts/clusters when I ran across this post with the script already written. You saved me some time, thanks!

    Reply

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