A virtual machine and its host must meet resource and configuration requirements for the virtual machine
disks to be migrated with Storage vMotion.
Storage vMotion is subject to the following requirements and limitations:
n Virtual machine disks must be in persistent mode or be raw device mappings (RDMs). For virtual
compatibility mode RDMs, you can migrate the mapping file or convert to thick-provisioned or thinprovisioned disks during migration as long as the destination is not an NFS datastore. If you convert
the mapping file, a new virtual disk is created and the contents of the mapped LUN are copied to this
disk. For physical compatibility mode RDMs, you can migrate the mapping file only.
n Migration of virtual machines during VMware Tools installation is not supported.
n Because VMFS3 datastores do not support large capacity virtual disks, you cannot move virtual disks
greater than 2TB from a VMFS5 datastore to a VMFS3 datastore.
n The host on which the virtual machine is running must have a license that includes Storage vMotion.
n ESX/ESXi 4.0 and later hosts do not require vMotion configuration in order to perform migration with
Storage vMotion.
n The host on which the virtual machine is running must have access to both the source and target
datastores.
n For limits on the number of simultaneous migrations with vMotion and Storage vMotion