VMware vMotion – Error “Different offload or security policies”


To totally unlock this section you need to Log-in

On a VMware ESX environment, When performing a vMotion migration (changing hosts), you could see this compatibility error:

Unable to migrate from  to : Currently connected network interface '' uses network '', which is configured for different offload or security policies on the destination host than on the source host.

This unable to migrate error indicates that the source and destination servers have different security or offload settings configured on the virtual switch or portgroup that the virtual machine is connected to.

The security and offload settings between virtual switches need to be the same to ensure that the functionality of the virtual machines is not affected upon migration.

After the investigation, the root cause is security policies of source and destination hosts is different. For example, if on the source host we have the following settings Traffic Shaping section, regarding the vSwitch to which each vNetwork has been configured, we will have to change the security policies to the same on the destination host (or revert all to default).

Promiscuous Mode: Accept
MAC Address Changes: Accept
Forged Transmits: Accept

Finally, to fix this issue, the settings on both hosts, involved, have to match.

VMware vMotion - Error "Different offload or security policies"

If needed, we can clear all the security checks (on both hosts), like on the following screenshot:

VMware vMotion - Error "Different offload or security policies"

The following is the procedure to follow to re-establish vMotion functionality between hosts:

  1. Check the properties of the virtual switch and/or portgroups between the source and destination servers. Ensure there are no differences between the settings on the Security tab, and the Traffic Shaping tab between the hosts.
  2. Log in to the vCenter Server that is managing the cluster in which your virtual desktops reside.
  3. Identify the hosts where your virtual desktops reside.
  4. Click each host and go to the Configuration section.
  5. Click the Networking subsection.
  6. Locate the virtual switch where your virtual desktops reside.
  7. Click Properties on that virtual switch.
  8. Select the base virtual switch name, such as vSwitch0, and click Edit.
  9. Review the settings in the Security tab and the Traffic Shaping tab between the hosts.

After the needed changes, the migration process of VMs hosted on the source VMware ESX host will be correctly moved on the new physical host without issues.