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destr0yr81
Contributor
Contributor

vCenter 5.1->5.5 roll back, nuked storage profiles, vCD not happy

Hi,

Attempted a vSphere 5.1U2a -> 5.5U2 upgrade this weekend; it failed for reasons we're still determining.  We rolled back to 5.1 (DB backups, Snapshots, etc.) and all of our Profile-Driven Storage VM Storage Profiles and User-Defined storage profiles are gone.  This makes vCD (5.5.2) very unhappy and things like starting a VM reports no disk space in its associated Storage Policies (and rightfully so).  The vCenter server, unfortunately, is physical and did not have snapshots, therefore vSphere 5.5 was fully uninstalled, directories in Program Files/ProgramData renamed .old and 5.1U2a reinstalled re-using the recovered database. 

The question is, what do I do now?

I'm hoping I can re-create my User-defined policies and VM profiles, map things as best as possible, referencing the info still in vCD and hope I've mapped things appropriately, and expect that vCD will acknowledge this, identify the names are the same (either by its moref info its pulled from vCenter) to Make Things Right again, or am I in a world of F.U.D. and potential storage vMotions?  We also have the option of File-Level Recovery on our vCenter server, to replace whatever is necessary, be it the Profile-Driven Storage directories or other.

Any advice would be appreciated.  Wasn't sure whether to post this in vSphere or vCD forum, however, as it was result from a failed vSphere upgrade, I'm hoping this is the right spot.

tl;dr - vSphere upgrade to 5.5 failed, back to 5.1, storage profiles gone, vCD unhappy.  Please help.

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rcporto
Leadership
Leadership

The reason why you lost the Storage Profiles is due the Inventory Services reset, take a look here: VMware KB: Resetting the VMware vCenter Server 5.x Inventory Service database

  • vCloud Director relies on the Managed Object ID component, which is only contained within the Inventory Service database for use with Storage Profiles. If Storage Profiles do not exist within the vCloud, the vCenter Server 5.1 and the vCenter Server 5.5 environment, then there is no expected effect on vCloud Director. If you reset the Inventory Service database, vCloud Director's connection with vCenter Server goes out of sync and does not have accurate information about managed virtual machines.
  • Any Storage Profiles that you are using via the vSphere Profile-Driven Storage service are lost when the Inventory Service database is reset.
  • All tags are deleted during a reset.
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Richardson Porto
Senior Infrastructure Specialist
LinkedIn: http://linkedin.com/in/richardsonporto
destr0yr81
Contributor
Contributor

Thank you.  I'll give this a read.  However the first Caution says:


Cautions:

  • If you are using vCloud Director with Storage Profiles, do not perform the steps within this article.

I am using vCloud Director.  I will however, link to my open SR ticket with this KB as it notes in the Purpose.

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rcporto
Leadership
Leadership

Please, don't perform the steps from KB... I only provided this link to shows you the reason why your vCloud Director is lost 🙂 The "Caution" section explain exactly why.

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Richardson Porto
Senior Infrastructure Specialist
LinkedIn: http://linkedin.com/in/richardsonporto