VMs name showing in Number and inaccessible

[prad20]

Hi,

I put one esxi 6.7 host under cluster in maintenance mode for firmware upgrade, when host is in MM there is no vms on it,  i have to cold boot the host as restarting was taking ages, after firmware upgrade and reboot of host, Host becomes not responding in VC where as server is up and accessible in ILO, after reconnecting Host in VC, some  of vms comes on this host in powered off state, these vms doesn't show its original name, these vms name shows in number and inaccessible like this , it does not migrate to other host in cluster if putting host in MM, only option for these vms is to remove from inventory.

anyone has faced this type of issue? any solution how to fix this issue? how to get the original hostname of these vms and make it accessible again. Thanks in advance..

[lucasbernadsky]

Hi there!

The only option you have in this case is to remove it from inventory, unfortunately.

Do you know which VM is missing? In that case, after removing it from inventory (Maybe in tasks & events you can find the name) you need to browse the datastore, go to the folder with the VM name and register the .VMX files.

An inaccessible VM is a VM who has lost it's fles (maybe because it was deleted from datastore or a failed script), so you need to register the VM again after removing it from inventory.

Best regards

[prad20]

Hi, thx for your reply, VMs are not known which vm it is, many vms on this cluster are there, under task and event of this inaccessible vm is showing

Configuration file for vm  on host  cannot be found, it would be easy if we know the actual host name of this vm then we can register it again.

[lucasbernadsky]

Well, maybe from an old RV Tools you can compare the inventory and identify the missing VM. Once you have it, yo need to register it again to vCenter.

To re-register a virtual machine:

1. Right-click the Unknown VM entry and click Remove From Inventory.
2. Browse to the appropriate datastore for the virtual machine and open the folder.
3. Right-click the *.vmx file and click Add to Inventory.
4. Power on the virtual machine.
5. Repeat Steps 1 to 4 for all unknown virtual machines.

[mrdrei]

Hi,

I just had the same issue. Luckily we are using RVTools, so I could verify that no VM is missing.

Alas we have a few more, which I will delete. I suppose that the communication between the

vCenter and the host went wrong and after the host came back up again, the vCenter thought

should have some VMs running.

Check this file on the host:

/etc/vmware/hostd/vmInventory.xml

there you can see, which VMs were registered on the host.

cheers

Chris