PowerFlex: Volume Migration Does Not Initiate During Active Rebalance Operation

Summary: In PowerFlex Core, attempting to initiate volume migration while a rebalance is in progress on the same SP results in migration not starting until the rebalance is complete. This is expected system behavior to avoid contention of system resources. ...

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Symptoms

When a volume migration is started while an SP rebalance is ongoing, the migration process does not progress. The end-user may observe that initiating a vtree or volume migration appears stuck or does not commence. 

PowerFlex running jobs

Impact

Unable to complete a volume migration until the rebalance is complete. 

 

Cause

The root cause is due to PowerFlex Core's design, where volume and vtree migrations are paused or blocked from starting during active rebalance operations on the same SP.

This behavior intentionally prevents resource contention and ensures data integrity during complex data redistribution tasks. Attempts to initiate migrations during an ongoing rebalance will remain pending until the rebalance completes or is manually stopped.

Resolution

Two workarounds are available:

  1. Wait for the rebalance to finish.
  2. With SME engagements temporarily disable rebalance on the Storage Pool of the source volume while closely monitoring disk utilization to ensure that no device reaches critical capacity. 
    scli --set_rebalance_mode --protection_domain_name <pd_name> --storage_pool_name <sp_name> --disable_rebalance

Affected Products

PowerFlex rack, ScaleIO
Article Properties
Article Number: 000373328
Article Type: Solution
Last Modified: 24 Sept 2025
Version:  1
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