Unable to delete greyed out orphaned VM

[Bushman007]

Hi all,

Hope some one can help with a tricky problem.

I have a greyed out, orphaned VM that associates itself with a server but when I access the server through SSH and VI directly to the host, there is nothing there.

When I typed vmware-cmd -l nothing happened as nothing is registered with the host.

I've literally tried everything but the fix, restarted the host, restarted the VCS, tried pressing the delete and obvious of right clicking.

Any ideas or suggestions?

Bushman

[ab_lal]

Have you tried registering the VM (Vmx file)

Browse the datastore and right click on the Vmdk.vmx file and choose 'Add to Inventory'

[Paule83]

Try this, if you have multiple ESX hosts:

1) put the ESX host with the orphaned vm into maintenance mode

2) remove the ESX host from the virtual center

3) connect the ESX host to the virtual center

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[ab_lal]

We tried what Paule83 said but that did not work immediately and we had to take areboot of the ESX Host and try again. It worked after the reboot so i guess the kernel might have locked the access.

[msemon1]

Sometimes you can restart vCenter Services or management services on ESX host if you have orphaned VM guests. Most of the time re-registering guests does the trick.

[WeaverJK2011101]

Resolution that worked for me: 

In vCenter 6.5

Right-click the VM > All vCenter Orchestrator plugin Actions > All categorized actions > Remove from Inventory.