Written by Suhas Savkoor
So I was trying to vMotion my virtual machines between two vDS and it was failing with the following error:
"The destination distributed switch has a different version or vendor than the source distributed switch"
A quick search brings up the following KB article which is great, however, there are certain cases where people do not want to upgrade the DVS to change the vendor ID.
In that situation, there are two workarounds:
1. Changing the entry from the MOB page of the vCenter:
- Open a browser and go to the following IP address to open the Managed Object Browser page:
https://<vcenter-IP/mob
- Click Content
- Under Name: rootFolder select the value: group-d1 (Datacenters)
- Under Name: childEntity select the value data-center
- Under Name: networkFolder select group-n* (network)
- Under Name: childEntity locate the DV Switch and prior to the name of the DVSwitch you will have the moid of the Switch in the format dvs-*number*
- Go to the following location once the moID is obtained.
https://vCenter-IP/mob/?moid=dvs-141
- Click PerformDvsProductSpecOperation_Task on the page
- Enter the following, For Fill operation: Upgrade
- Fill productSpec:
<productSpec>
<vendor>VMware, Inc.</vendor>
</productSpec>
- Click Invoke Method
Go back to the vCenter Server and verify the Vendor Name now on your vDS.
2. If you are using a SQL database, you can run the below query:
update vpx_dvs set product_vendor='VMware, Inc.' where id=XXX(replace XXX with your dvs id);
dvs ID can be found from the steps above.
However, before performing any steps, have snapshots, backup of your vCenter and database.