Templates greyed out after upgrade to ESX 3.5 / VC 2.5

[AndyShine]

I have recently upgraded my environment from ESX 3.0.2 to 3.5 and VC 2.02 to V 2.5. My vm's are running fine in the new environment. Unfortunately when I went to clone a machine template I found, on right clicking the template, that all but the the "Add Permission" option where grey'ed out. Indeed the template names are displayed with a light grey, italacised font. I attach to the ESX server as root (via VC) so I don't think this is a permissions problem(?). Also my templates are stored on a local datastore rather than a shared one (though I doubt this matters)

I assume this has been caused by the upgrades: the templates were ok before I started.

Any suggestions?

Thanks

Andrew

[t35216]

Hi Andrew,

did you try remove/add to inventory, I had similar and this sorted for me.

Regards,

Peter

[TiBoReR]

I did the same thing to resolve the same problem.

[AndyShine]

Peter,

Thanks for the prompt reply.

Are you suggesting removing\adding the templates from the inventory? Since I have no options at all I can't select the remove option when I highlight the template

I supposed I could try this for the whole ESX server...?

Thanks

Andrew

[t35216]

Andrew,

you might browse the datastore and open the folder containing the template and add to inventory from there maybe the link will restore to original, other wise new name on add operation.

Regards,

Peter

[AndyShine]

Sadly, that doesn't work either. If I try either a new name or leave it the same I get an error (A virtual machine or template having the same name is already registered. Server error: The specified key, name, or identifier already exists)

Andrew

[AndyShine]

Ok, I found a solution:

Completely remove the ESX server from the cluster (evacuate running machines, put into maintenance mode, disconnect, remove)

Add the ESX host back to the cluster (Add, exit maintenance)

Browse the datastore for the .vmtx and Add to inventory.

:smileyblush:

Thanks all

[MrEHere]

I am having similar issue, except I get the "already exists" error on every host when I try to add template back into inventory.

Any suggestions?

[Chris_Uys]

A much easier fix is to simply restart the vmware management agent on the esx server.

/etc/init.d/mgmt-vmware restart

[Jules1]

Hi,

I think I have a similar problem, I currently have all VMs running fine and are viewable in the inventory, but can no longer see the templates in the inventory, I can see the files in the datastore for the templates but the option for 'adding to inventory' is greyed out. We also had a recent upgrade to 2.5 and since then haven't been able to view them.

Is this the same fix?

[satin]

I have exactly the same problem with this. I tried retstarting virtual center service as well as rebooting esx hosts but all this done to no avail. Did you find any solution to this

[Jules1]

Not as yet, however I have got our 3rd part support looking into this, but they can't see the cause or solution as of yet. I will update you as soon as they find something though.

[clandos]

@ all

you have to restart the vpxa deamon.

service vmware-vpxa restart

the lost template will be accessible again.

Peter

[Scott_Y]

Peter, that was the resolution for this issue for me.

Thank you so much for posting this.

Scott Y

[akfoote]

Also worked. Great tip.

Thanks

kevinfoote