monitoring

DeprecatedMachineType

Meaning

This alert triggers when one or more Virtual Machines (VMs) are using machine types that have been marked as no longer supported.

Impact

Running VMs

Continue running but are using an unsupported machine type.
Newer nodes might not support the machine type, so the next live migration may fail or become unresponsive.
This can block node maintenance and disrupt high availability.

Stopped VMs

No immediate issue while stopped.
When restarted, they might fail to schedule or become unresponsive if newer nodes no longer support the machine type.
This might prevent workloads from coming back online after maintenance or cluster upgrades.

Diagnosis

The alert detects VMs using unsupported machine types.

Identify affected VMs Use the alert description to locate VM names, namespaces, and nodes (if running).

Root Cause: The VM’s spec.template.spec.domain.machine.type field is set to a type that has been marked as unsupported. This can happen due to:

VMs created before the removal of support for a machine type.
VM templates not updated after cluster upgrades.
Manual VM creation using old machine type references.

Mitigation

Update affected VMs to use a supported machine type. You can do one of the following:

Edit VM definitions individually by modifying the spec.template.spec.domain.machine.type field.
For a smoother and cleaner update of multiple VMs, use the kubevirt-api-lifecycle-automation tool to transition all deprecated VMs in one operation. This ensures consistent, automated migration and reduces manual errors or downtime during cluster upgrades. For details, see Updating multiple VMs.

Important: Plan and apply these updates before performing cluster upgrades to avoid VM restart failures or compatibility issues.

Alternative: remove the machine field to let KubeVirt default to the newest supported type:

# Removes spec.template.spec.domain.machine so the mutating webhook defaults it
kubectl patch vm <vm-name> -n <namespace> --type='json' \
  -p='[{"op":"remove","path":"/spec/template/spec/domain/machine"}]'

Note: The automation tool performs these JSON patches in bulk across multiple VMs.

If you cannot resolve the issue, see the following resources:

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