VMware Cloud Community
BDorroh
Contributor
Contributor

Template Disconnected

In Virutal Center 2.5, I have a template that is showing up as disconnected. There is no option to connect. If I right-click the template, I have minimal options and the only thing that isn't grayed out is "add permission..." In the SUMMARY tab, all options are grayed out. I don't recall seeing templates or VMs disconnected. I thought that only happened to Hosts. Any suggestions? Screen shot attached.

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29 Replies
Chamon
Commander
Commander

Can VC access the LUN where it is stored? If so then I would try to restart the VC Server service on the VC.

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BDorroh
Contributor
Contributor

Yes, no trouble there. All the other VMs are running and I have no issues with them.

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Chamon
Commander
Commander

This will register a vm with the host when run from the SC

vmware-cmd register -s /vmfs/volumes/LUN/vm/vm.vmx

where the vm.vmx is the name of yur VM

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hicksj
Virtuoso
Virtuoso

Happens periodically. Only sure-fire way to get them back that we've found is to remove the offending Templates from Inventory, browse out to where they live on vmfs and re-Add to Inventory...

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Chamon
Commander
Commander

But I think they said that that option was grayed out. Maybe log into the Host with the VIC and do it from there??

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BDorroh
Contributor
Contributor

Correct, the "remove from inventory" option is grayed out. I'll try going in locally to the host and see if I can do it there.

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BDorroh
Contributor
Contributor

I just remembered, this is a template so it's not available from the host. Only from Virtual Center.

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BDorroh
Contributor
Contributor

OK, I took the easy way out. I rebooted the VC server and now the template is connected. Odd behavior, but I'm glad it was an easy fix. Thanks for the imput everyone!

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RobSF
Contributor
Contributor

FYI: Rebooting the ESX host that's attached to the template will also work, and it's probably less disruptive than rebooting the VC server.

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Chamon
Commander
Commander

Sorry but I would have to disagree with that. If you reboot the host then

all VMs on it will also go down or will have to be moved off and then

back. During a reboot of the VC all of the VMs can continue to run as usual.

You can also just restart the VirtualCenter Server service in the Microsoft

services console. This is faster than restarting the entire server.

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RobSF
Contributor
Contributor

Put the target host into maintenance mode and VMotion all running VMs to other hosts. Then you can reboot without breaking anything....

Up to you, of course. We have several administrators working in VC right now. Rebooting the VC server would have stomped on my co-workers. Rebooting one host didn't do any harm other than generating an alarm about reduced failover capacity for our HA cluster.

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RickCX4
Contributor
Contributor

This morining I found the same problem on VC2.02.

2 templates orphaned and 1 disconnected

I had to delete the orphaned templates and added a new vm referring to the datastore of the exsiting vmd(t)k

A reboot of the vc server restored the disconnected template (thanks to the tip found here Smiley Happy

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Sean_D
Contributor
Contributor

I ran into this same problem (with VC 2.5 and ESX 3.5). Based on the answers posted here, I decided to take a somewhat simpler approach.

After logging into the service console I ran: sudo /sbin/service mgmt-vmware restart

This restarts hostd, but keeps all the VMs running. The host showed up as disconnected to VirtualCenter for a few minutes. But when it came back, the templates were accesible again.

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dpomeroy
Champion
Champion

Restarting the managment agents is the method I have done as well, seems like the least effort/risk route.

Don Pomeroy

VMware Communities User Moderator

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jqualls
Contributor
Contributor

Awesome post! Thats twice in one day that the forums have helped! I recommend that you DO NOT reboot the host. Just the agents. Thanks again! Smiley Happy

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carpenike
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

Also, if you restart the VMWareVirtualCenter Management Server service it should bring it back up fine. This has the same problem of disconnecting all the users working in VirtualCenter but it's downtime is much lower than rebooting the full server; roughly 30 seconds downtime.

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njovanelly
Contributor
Contributor

Restart of the VC server Service Corrects this issue.

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stvkpln
Virtuoso
Virtuoso

I've found the easiest way to correct the issue is to disconnect and reconnect the host in VC.. that's the overall least disruptive and it works every time...

-Steve
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scott28tt
VMware Employee
VMware Employee

The least disruptive process of all the suggestions here would be to restart mgmt-vmware on the host that has the template registered against it. Another one is NOT to use VC 2.0.2, which was notorious for orphaned templates!

Restarting the VC service, rebooting the VC server, rebooting a host - like using a sledgehammer to crack a nut as we say in the UK....

Scott.


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