VM showing disconnected

[b1izzard]

I intentionally shutdown a vm on an ESXi 6.5 host, then I shut down the host.  Now the vm shows as disconnected in vCenter.  I want to bring this up on another ESXi host but cannot find a way to do this.  I can't remove it from inventory, it is grayed out.  Granted I could start up the host and it should reconnect, but the concern is what if the host died?  Presumably if the vm was powered on, if the host failed, HA should have moved it to another host, but is it different if the host is shut down?  Does it just go to orphan land?  If the host actually died, would I be able to remove the host from the cluster, and would it allow me to start the vm on another host? 

[daphnissov]

If you shutdown a host with local storage, the VMs on that host have nowhere to move, so they're going to show disconnected. The only way you fix that is bring the host back up, or present shared storage to all hosts in the cluster and enable HA.

[b1izzard]

Sorry, guess I made an assumption.  The hosts are all connected to shared storage and HA is enabled.  I can vmotion all the other vm's between hosts. 

[Scott Vessey]

So the problem VM is on shared storage too?

Does it have a device connection to something on that host? (locally stored ISO or some physical device/passthrough)

Has that VM ever been run on a different host?

[b1izzard]

Yes the problem VM is on shared storage.  All ISO's are on shared storage.  Yes the VM was run on a different host.  I was vMotioning it back and forth between the 3 Dell hosts just fine. 

Here is more background: we are in the process of replacing our 6 hosts with 6 new hosts.  All hosts are joined to the same vCenter.  One issue is we are going from HP to Dell, and I have noticed that it won't allow me to vMotion from the HP's to the Dell's (EVC warning), but I created the VM on a Dell host and have had no problems moving it around between the other 2 Dell hosts.  Due to limitations with rack space and switch ports, I setup the first 3 hosts, then put them in maintenance mode, then shut them down so they are showing disconnected (then added the other 3 new hosts).

The vm I shut down is on one of those Dell hosts, so my best guess is that maybe even though the vm was shut down, none of the 3 HP hosts were able to take control of the vm so I could start it, so it goes to orphan land and shows disconnected.  Could this all just be due to the EVC issue?  I would think if the vm was shut down, as well as the host, it would allow me to fire it up on another host even if it was another brand.

Interestingly, in my home lab, I just tried shutting down the vm, followed by the host it, and I was able to bring the vm up on another host as I would have expected. 

[daphnissov]

If you performed a "shutdown" of the host through the vSphere client, that is not the same thing as failure of the host. One is a controlled action while the other is not. If you performed a "shutdown" then any VMs shouldn't get registered/restarted on other hosts, but if the host failed (or you rebooted/shut it down ​not​ via the vSphere Client) then HA should kick in.