VMware Cloud Community
mmeserve
Contributor
Contributor

VM Remnants appearing on ESX host after VMs were migrated to a different ESXi host

I  migrated several VMs to another ESXi host today to perform some maint on one of the hosts.  When I log into the ESX web console I still see remnants of the VMs that I moved.  This host is offline but still registered several VMs as being hosted on it.  About half of the items are .vmx files from various VMs that show a status of Invalid.  The other items just appear as powered off VMs.  Anyone have an idea why this would be and what would need to be done to rectify?

Thanks!

Reply
0 Kudos
9 Replies
scott28tt
VMware Employee
VMware Employee

Screenshots would be useful for others to see what you see.


-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Although I am a VMware employee I contribute to VMware Communities voluntarily (ie. not in any official capacity)
VMware Training & Certification blog
Reply
0 Kudos
Lalegre
Virtuoso
Virtuoso

Hey mmeserve​,

If you migrated the VMs manually from the Datastore this is expected as the .vmx is registered in another ESXi. If your VMs are powered on in the ESXi that you migrated them it is safely to "Remove from inventory" the VMs from the old ESXi.

Of course this is assuming that you moved manually. If you have vCenter and you used vMotion you should not face this issue.

Reply
0 Kudos
nachogonzalez
Commander
Commander

Hey, hope you are doing fine?
If you don't have a vCenter server (which has a centralized inventory for all your VMs) both esxi hosts will have the .vmx registered.
If the VM is powered on at the destination host you can safely remove the VM from source.

For all this tasks i storngly recomend using vCenter

Reply
0 Kudos
mmeserve
Contributor
Contributor

Thanks for the responses, everyone.  Here's a couple of samples of what I'm seeing on the ESXi host.  One attachment is showing the vmx files and the second attachment shows what looks like actual VM objects.  I located one of these VMs on the host it was moved to.  It appears fine.  There's no correlation between the vmx files and the VM objects.  All the vmx files corresponded to different VMs and not the VM objects on this host.  Of note, I manually migrated these from within the vSphere web client. All the VMs that continue to appear on this host were moved while powered off.  This is not true for VMs corresponding to the vmx files. 

Reply
0 Kudos
scott28tt
VMware Employee
VMware Employee

“manually migrated” as in a vMotion or cold migration, or something else?

Have you tried restarting the management agents on the original host and restarting the services on your vCenter Server?


-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Although I am a VMware employee I contribute to VMware Communities voluntarily (ie. not in any official capacity)
VMware Training & Certification blog
Reply
0 Kudos
mmeserve
Contributor
Contributor

Sorry for the confusion.   Right-clicked VM in VSphere Web Client, clicked Migrate.

Reply
0 Kudos
scott28tt
VMware Employee
VMware Employee

So to my last question:

Have you tried restarting the management agents on the original host and restarting the services on your vCenter Server?


-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Although I am a VMware employee I contribute to VMware Communities voluntarily (ie. not in any official capacity)
VMware Training & Certification blog
Reply
0 Kudos
Lalegre
Virtuoso
Virtuoso

That happened to me not so much time ago so what i did was this:

  1. Make sure that the migrated VM can be powered on in the new ESXi.
  2. Right-click the invalid one.
  3. Remove from inventory.

And that is all, everything should be working. There is no harm on this procedure.

Reply
0 Kudos
mmeserve
Contributor
Contributor

Have been working with support last couple of days on and off.  Hasn't been resolved yet but there is now more information.

- All VMs were orginally vmotioned off this host.  The host was put into maintenance mode and the latest HP Service Pack was applied to the server

- After SP installation and rebooting the server came up in a Not Responding state in vSphere

- iLO on the server indicated iLO health issue.  Cleared and reformatted iLO memory, which resolved that issue

- Rebooted server again and continues to appear as Not Responding in vSphere

- Event log on the ESX host indicates 'Cannot login vpxuser@127.0.0.1

- Failed logins for vpxuser are also seen in hostd.log

- Even though all VMs were vmotioned off the host prior to Service Pack install there still remain remnants of various VMs on the host

- All VMs appear to be in working order on other hosts

- Options to remove/delete these remnants on the troubled host are all grayed out even though I am logged in as root.  Assuming this may be a result of not being able to authenticate vpxuser

Reply
0 Kudos