You can migrate virtual machine disks with Storage vMotion if the virtual machine and its host meet specific resource and configuration requirements.

To migrate virtual machine disks with Storage vMotion, the virtual machine and its host must meet the following requirements.

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For ESXi 5.0 and later hosts, you can migrate virtual machines that have snapshots. For earlier versions of ESXi, you cannot migrate virtual machines that have snapshots.

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Virtual machine disks must be in persistent mode or be raw device mappings (RDMs). For physical and virtual compatibility mode RDMs, you can migrate the mapping file only. For virtual compatibility mode RDMs, you can use the vSphere Web Client to convert to thick-provisioned or thin-provisioned disks during migration as long as the destination is not an NFS datastore. You cannot use the svmotion command to perform this conversion.

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The host on which the virtual machine is running must have a license that includes Storage vMotion.

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The host on which the virtual machine is running must have access to both the source and target datastores.

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A particular host can be involved in up to four migrations with vMotion or Storage vMotion at one time. See Limits on Simultaneous Migrations in the vCenter Server and Host Management documentation for details.

If you use the vSphere Web Client for migration with svmotion, the system performs several compatibility checks. These checks are not supported by the svmotion vCLI command.