VMware Cloud Community
michaelbachmann
Contributor
Contributor

VRA 8.x Unregister VM

Hello!

Has anyone found a way to cleanly unregister machines in VRA 8.x so that they can be onboarded again?

 

Some other approaches in blogs suggest to delete the corresponding record of the resource in the PSQL database (dep_resource), but this leaves some dependencies and you can't onboard the machine again.

 

Thanks for reading.

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43 Replies
lnairn
VMware Employee
VMware Employee

Hi @michaelbachmann ,

AFAIK there is no a supported way to unregister a VM from vRA right now. Maybe you can file a feature request (https://kb.vmware.com/s/article/1002123)?

Regards,

Leandro.

BrettK1
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

I would be adding my +1 to this necessary feature, but the vRealize ideas portal links to a SecurID login page.

Maybe this is just an error currently, as the vSphere and Workspace One links both work?

michaelbachmann
Contributor
Contributor

Same here.. I am not able to pen the ideas portal

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BrettK1
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

Discovering that VMs can't consistently be offboarded (SOME can, depending on how they were created/onboarded/imported), but overall this is a showstopper for switching over from 7.6 to me, so the more +1s I can get on this feature request the better.

ronaldod
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

I second this. I would like sometimes to vMotion a vm to an other cluster that is in control by an other VRA. Just for me now is backup the machine. delete the original and restore it on the other side. Talking about not flexible.

BrettK1
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

FYI, the Feature Request article was updated today to state that the vRealize feature request portal is for 'Internal Use Only'.

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ronaldod
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

Is there also a bug reporting portal. Have al kinda bugs in javascript in orchestrator to report. From lint errors till complete disasters.

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BrettK1
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

Not that I'm aware of.   I generally open SRs to report bugs (and sometimes they're already 'known issues'...  which would be handy to have available ahead of time).

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qc4vmware
Virtuoso
Virtuoso

I was shocked that this is not a feature yet nor is there a supported method to change a deployments project.  If VMware  folk are monitoring please +1 this in your internal tracking for feature requests.  I think anyone using these tools on prem as part of managing their VMware infrastructure is going to need these features and quickly considering 7.6 is going end of support this year.  Don't make us cobble together our own unsupported methods for doing this.

BrettK1
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

8.7 supports changing projects for PROVISIONED deployments, but not onboarded/migrated deployments...
At least Onboarded deployments can be offboarded and re-onboarded into another project, but I think this still leaves migrated deployments hanging.

qc4vmware
Virtuoso
Virtuoso

Nice!  I hadn't looked at the release notes yet or upgraded.  Still on 8.6.2 .  I'm curious why there is any distinction/restriction against a migrated as opposed to one that was freshly deployed.  Doesn't make any sense to me but maybe I'm missing something.

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RebeccaW
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

Any word on when UNREGISTER for a PROVISIONED machine will be available?

 

Use cases here being a VM that has been moved to another vCenter so is a 'different' object technically. Also when a VM has been restored from a backup with a different UUID. In 7.6 we just create a CSV with all the needed properties and import in the new one then unregister the old. Need the old unregistered not deleted as it should not go through the delete-related event subscriptions we have that do things like mark it Retired in CMDB and delete all the DNS records. 

qc4vmware
Virtuoso
Virtuoso

I'll amplify this again as well... really wish I could attend the Customer Technical Advisory Board next month.  If I could this would definitely be something I try to drive home.  It is really problematic not being able to do this.

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mastefani
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

Totally agree, we've been asking our rep about this since 8.x was released.  I'm glad they added it for onboarded VMs, but we're doing a vCenter migration and I'm dreading all the cleanup I'm going to have to do because I can't unregister VMs provisioned through vRA.  

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qc4vmware
Virtuoso
Virtuoso

I've been really confused by the distinction between an "on boarded" vm vs a deployed vm?  Maybe I will understand better once I do some brownfield migrations into vRA.  For a while there you could only change projects for a deployment if the resources were "On Boarded" but recently was enabled for those deployed from vRA.  I don't follow the logic why that would be allowed only for "On Boarded".

Sorry to hear you have an overly complicated migration to deal with because of this limitation.

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stratoCumulus
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

This is a concern for my environment as well, and would like to reiterate the need for this. There seems to be an API that may be applicable but unsure:

Could someone explain what this API is used for? 

POST /relocation/api/wo/unregister-machine

I'm assuming that you provide the resource link of the deployment (or machine?) in the POST body? 

Thanks!

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michaelbachmann
Contributor
Contributor

Hi @stratoCumulus,

This just triggers the "Unregister" day 2 action  on the machine.
It won't work if the "Unregister" action is not available on that machine.

Post body:

(resource link of the machine)

 

{
  "resourceLink": "/resources/compute/3b957710-92db-3cf1-8486-8d6dfd123eed"
}

 

 

If you try to execute this action on a machine that cannot be unregistered (e.g. because it is deployed and not onboarded) you will get following response:

 

 

{
    "message": "Only onboarded machines can be unregistered.",
    "statusCode": 400,
    "errorCode": 0,
    "serverErrorId": "1a0f684e-b76a-4265-8752-c5a151de5c6b",
    "documentKind": "com:vmware:xenon:common:ServiceErrorResponse"
}

 

 

Czernobog
Expert
Expert

The feature still isn't there in 8.10. It seems to be one of those 7.6 features that somehow are too hard to implement in the new release.

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qc4vmware
Virtuoso
Virtuoso

@lnairn that link for vRealize Suite products seems only available to VMware employees.  Do you have insight to whether anyone has filed a request?  I find it hard to believe this isn't being tracked as a high priority ask from the actual users of vRA.  Is there another way of filing feature requests that is available to the customer base?  If not can you put one in on our/my behalf?

Thanks!

Paul