We do lots of testing and sometimes will get 20-40 orphaned VM(s) and as you said on the individual host they'll be gone but on vCenter there is still the stale orphaned instances. You could manually remove from inventory on each one or bulk them up in a folder, but I decided to write a small script to automate this if you have orphaned VM(s) showing up in vCenter.
#!/usr/bin/perl -w
use strict;
use warnings;
use VMware::VILib;
use VMware::VIRuntime;
Opts::parse();
Opts::validate();
Util::connect();
my ($hosts, $host);
$hosts = Vim::find_entity_views(view_type => 'HostSystem');
unless (defined $hosts){
die "No hosts found.\n";
}
foreach $host(@{$hosts}) {
print "Searching Host: ", $host->name,"\n";
my $vm_views = Vim::get_views(mo_ref_array => $host->vm, properties => );
foreach(sort {$a->{'summary.config.name'} cmp $b->{'summary.config.name'}} @$vm_views) {
if($_->{'summary.runtime.connectionState'}->val eq 'orphaned') {
print "\t",$_->{'summary.config.name'}, " ", $_->{'summary.runtime.connectionState'}->val," & Removed from inventory!\n";
$_->UnregisterVM();
}
}
}
Util::disconnect();
This Perl script just connects to vCenter and will look for all VM(s) that have a connectionState equal to orphaned and it'll unregister and remove from inventory.
Generally you should be able to manually remove from inventory using the VI Client and if vCenter is being stubborned, you can restart the services as suggested and usually that'll do that trick.
=========================================================================
William Lam
VMware vExpert 2009
VMware ESX/ESXi scripts and resources at:
The script should be pointing to your vCenter server and using valid credentials to login and requires you to install the VI Perl Toolkit on either a Windows or Linux system, it's not to be executed on the Service Console of the host. The issue lies in your vCenter having stale information, to the script will query vCenter to see if it even detects those Orphaned VM(s) and check the state it thinks it's in.
=========================================================================
William Lam
VMware vExpert 2009
VMware ESX/ESXi scripts and resources at:
You can install it on the vCenter server, but it does not have to. Usually you would just install it on a desktop system that you would use to connect to vCenter/etc.
=========================================================================
William Lam
VMware vExpert 2009
VMware ESX/ESXi scripts and resources at:
What version of vCenter and ESX/ESXi are you using? This should work on ESX 3.5+ and vCenter 2.5+ using VI SDK 2.5
Here the same code working on a Windows XP system running VI Perl Toolkit 1.6
C:\Documents and Settings\Administrator\Desktop>getVMState.pl --server reflex.pr
imp-industries.com --username primp
Enter password:
Searching Host: himalaya.primp-industries.com
Auroa connected
Bitsy connected
Certiorari connected
Clifford connected
ESX-Kickstart connected
Fourier connected
......
=========================================================================
William Lam
VMware vExpert 2009
VMware ESX/ESXi scripts and resources at: