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A general system error occurred: The VMotion failed because the ESX hosts were not able to connect over the VMotion network

The error:

A general system error occurred: The VMotion failed because the ESX hosts were not able to connect over the VMotion network.  Please check your VMotion network settings and physical network configuration.

Happens when your vmkernel port cannot connect to the vmkernel port on the remote Vsphere ESX host. In order to correct this you’ll have to ensure that your tcp-ip network settings are correctly defined and you can use the command vmkping with root privileges:

[admin@esx02 admin]$ vmkping
-bash: vmkping: command not found
[admin@esx02 admin]$ su -
Password:
[root@esx02 root]# vmkping
vmkping [args] [host]
   args:
      -D            vmkernel TCP stack debug mode
      -c <count>    set packet count
      -i <interval> set interval
      -s <size>     set send size
      -v            verbose

   NOTE: In vmkernel TCP debug mode, vmkping traverses
         VSI and pings various configured addresses.
[root@esx02 root]#
 


In order to test the connectivity with other hosts the command should look like this:

[root@esx02 root]# vmkping esx01
PING esx01 (10.94.162.112): 56 data bytes
64 bytes from 10.94.36.12: icmp_seq=0 ttl=64 time=1.686 ms
64 bytes from 10.94.36.12: icmp_seq=1 ttl=64 time=0.335 ms
64 bytes from 10.94.36.12: icmp_seq=2 ttl=64 time=0.362 ms

--- esx01 ping statistics ---
3 packets transmitted, 3 packets received, 0% packet loss
round-trip min/avg/max = 0.335/0.794/1.686 ms
[root@esx02 root]#

If your results are like the ones shown above then you have successfully configured your vmkernel port.

Hope this helps!