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The VM xxx cannot be migrated to Host xxx due to incompatibility issues….
Published Feb 10 2020 12:00 AM 14.6K Views
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Hello everyone, my name is John Clyburn and I am a Sr. consultant in MCS. I’ve recently been working with System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2019. While attempting to migrate virtual machines (VM) from a  standalone Windows Server 2019 (version 1809) Hyper-V host to another, some of the VMs failed with the VMM Error 23008. The Windows Hyper-V hosts were recently upgraded from Windows 2016. 

 

I ran into this problem and I would like to share how I resolved it in hopes that this will save you some time if you ever run into it while troubleshooting.  

 

PROBLEM: 

When attempting to migrate VMs from one Windows 2019 Hyper-V host to another, some would migrate, and others would fail. The steps I used were as follows: 

 

  1. Open the VMM console and navigate to the target VM. 
  2. Right click the VM and select: Migrate Virtual Machine. 
  3. I selected the options I wanted and selected Move. 
  4. Some of the VMs would fail with the following Error 23008: 

 

image001.png 

 

I compared the successfully migrated VMs to the ones that failed but could not detect any real difference (OS, Size, Number of CPUs, RAM, Etc.). I check the Allow migration to a virtual machine host with a different version option in VMM and it was set. 

 

image002.png 

 

I then checked the VM versions and determined they were 5.0. As I understand it, this is supported on Windows Server, version 1809. To check the version: 

 

Using SCVMM: 

  1. Open the VMM console and navigate to the VM. 
  2. Right click the VM and select Properties. 
  3. Click on the General tab. 

 

image003.png 

 

Using POWERSHELL: 

On the Hyper-V host, open an administrative PowerShell command prompt and type: 

Get-VM * | Format-Table Name, Version 

 

SOLUTION: 

There are several reasons you could receive the VMM Error 23008 error above. This is just the solution I used to resolve it. 

 

FIRST TRY 

Confirm that the option Allow migration to a virtual machine host with a different version is selected. 

  1. Open the VMM console and navigate to the VM that is producing the error. 
  2. Right click it and select Properties. 
  3. Select Hardware Configuration-Processor. 
  4. Confirm/Select the option: Allow migration to a virtual machine host with a different version 
  5. Now try the migration again. 
  6. If migration fails, proceed to the SECOND TRY section below.  

 

SECOND TRY: 

Upgrade the VM Configuration versions. There are several ways to upgrade it. Below are a few ways. 

 

Note before proceeding with this option, make sure you read the following article: 

Upgrade virtual machine version in Hyper-V on Windows 10 or Windows Server 

 

Note if present, the upgrade process will remove all checkpoints of the VM. 

 

Upgrade the Configuration Version using SCVMM. 

  1. Open the VMM console and navigate to the target VM <VM1> . 
  2. Shutdown the virtual machine <VM1> . 
  3. Right click the virtual machine and select: Update Functional Level 
  4. Click Ok to confirm the upgrade. 
  5. Now try the migration again. 

 

Upgrade the Configuration Version using Hyper-V Manager. 

  1. On the Hyper-V host the virtual machine is assigned, open Hyper-V manager. 
  2. Shutdown the virtual machine <VM1> . 
  3. Right click  the virtual machine and select Upgrade Configuration Version. 
  4. Click Ok to confirm the upgrade. 
  5. Now try the migration again. 

 

Upgrade the Configuration Version using PowerShell.
1. Shut down the virtual machine in Hyper-V Manager.
2. On the Hyper-V host the virtual machine is assigned, open Hyper-V manager.
3. Shutdown the virtual machine <VM1>.
4. Open an administrative PowerShell prompt and run the following command:
        a. Update-VMVersion <vmname>
        b. where vmname is the name of the virtual machine:
5. Example:
        a. Update-VMVersion <VM1>
6. Now try the migration again.

 

Note on a Windows Server 2019 1809, the VM is upgraded to Configuration Version 9.0. 

 

 

And that’s it. The steps above were successful for me to resolve the VM migrations. I hope this post saves you time if you ever encounter these errors.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Version history
Last update:
‎Feb 03 2020 12:08 PM
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