Removing a Dead ESX Host from Virtual Center

[mike_caddy]

I have an Expired (as in dead!) host in my virtual center system, I want to remove it, however, when I try to remove I get an error

"Unable to contact the specified host ....."

[ShanVMLand]

Try to restart the License Server if that dead ESX used this License server.

Shan

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[mike_caddy]

We have tried that, the host has been on the list for a couple of weeks, during which time both Virtual Center and the Licence manager service have been restarted.

[AndreTheGiant]

Create an empty cluster, move ESX to that cluster and remove the cluster.

Andre

[mike_caddy]

Tried that, Same error.

[AndreTheGiant]

The host is in disconnected state?

If you have a spare hardware you can install a ESX with the same name, add and then remove.

Andre

[lamw]

Do you have VI Perl Toolkit or vCLI or VIMA by any chance?

You can try this Perl script to see if it does the job, it'll prompt you to confirm the removal of your ESX(i) host and provide some information such as the current connectionState seen by vCenter.

Here is a sample execution:

--server =

[vi-admin@vima ~]$ ./removeHostFromvCenterByForce.pl --server reflex.primp-industries.com --username primp --host kang.primp-industries.com
Enter password:

Found Host: kang.primp-industries.com with state: notResponding
Would you like to remove this host from vCenter? y|n
y
Destroying host "kang.primp-industries.com"
Successfully removed "kang.primp-industries.com"!

You should see a task to remove the host from vCenter and that'll take maybe 30seconds or so....

Attached to this reply is removeHostFromvCenterByForce.pl

=========================================================================

William Lam

VMware vExpert 2009

VMware ESX/ESXi scripts and resources at:

VMware Code Central - Scripts/Sample code for Developers and Administrators

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[bulletprooffool]

Nice lamw - one for the toolkit!

[goudreal]

I'm having the same problem (retired ESX) but when I ran the script, it gave me the following error:

Fault string: 'the operation is not supported on the object'

Fault detail: 'NotSupported'

[mike_caddy]

Thanks,

I took an alternative route in the end, I created a new vSphere vCenter server and migrated each of my hosts over one by one as we where readly for esx 4.0

I now have my old vCenter server with one datacenter left to move and three broken Datacenters which will not delete

[loriwmg1]

THAT WORKED  ~~~  THANK YOU!!!