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VRA 8.x Unregister VM

  • 1.  VRA 8.x Unregister VM

    Posted Feb 09, 2021 01:00 PM

    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.



  • 2.  RE: VRA 8.x Unregister VM

    Broadcom Employee
    Posted Feb 15, 2021 04:35 PM

    Hi  ,

    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.



  • 3.  RE: VRA 8.x Unregister VM

    Posted Mar 28, 2022 10:51 PM

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



  • 4.  RE: VRA 8.x Unregister VM

    Posted Mar 28, 2022 10:57 PM

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



  • 5.  RE: VRA 8.x Unregister VM

    Posted Mar 28, 2022 11:02 PM

    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).



  • 6.  RE: VRA 8.x Unregister VM

    Posted Mar 31, 2022 09:33 PM

    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.



  • 7.  RE: VRA 8.x Unregister VM

    Posted Mar 31, 2022 09:37 PM

    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.



  • 8.  RE: VRA 8.x Unregister VM

    Posted Mar 31, 2022 09:43 PM

    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.



  • 9.  RE: VRA 8.x Unregister VM

    Posted Nov 02, 2022 05:21 PM

     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



  • 10.  RE: VRA 8.x Unregister VM

    Posted Nov 18, 2022 08:26 PM

    Same here. Required feature. Asked product management for it when VRa 8.0 came out. 



  • 11.  RE: VRA 8.x Unregister VM

    Posted Dec 17, 2021 06:39 PM

    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?



  • 12.  RE: VRA 8.x Unregister VM

    Posted Dec 20, 2021 09:51 AM

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



  • 13.  RE: VRA 8.x Unregister VM

    Posted Dec 20, 2021 05:45 PM

    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.



  • 14.  RE: VRA 8.x Unregister VM

    Posted Feb 23, 2022 10:00 PM

    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.



  • 15.  RE: VRA 8.x Unregister VM

    Posted Jul 26, 2022 05:20 PM

    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. 



  • 16.  RE: VRA 8.x Unregister VM

    Posted Jul 27, 2022 09:48 PM

    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.



  • 17.  RE: VRA 8.x Unregister VM

    Posted Jul 29, 2022 12:19 AM

    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.  



  • 18.  RE: VRA 8.x Unregister VM

    Posted Jul 30, 2022 06:50 AM

    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.



  • 19.  RE: VRA 8.x Unregister VM

    Posted Aug 03, 2022 01:07 PM

    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!



  • 20.  RE: VRA 8.x Unregister VM

    Posted Aug 04, 2022 05:58 AM

    Hi ,

    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"
    }

     

     



  • 21.  RE: VRA 8.x Unregister VM

    Posted Oct 19, 2022 09:11 AM

    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.



  • 22.  RE: VRA 8.x Unregister VM

    Posted Dec 08, 2022 03:09 PM

    Not even near done rolling over form 7.6 and hit an issue with this. Have an SR in but looks like on the vCenter side there were some host issues and some vms may have been removed and re-registered in vCenter. Same UUID, same name, new moref, different folder, tags gone. Data collection may have swug by in the middle of it and now I have some Missing in deployments with its twin sitting in Discovered.

     

    Don't want to just delete the machine or deployment in vRA and risk kicking off an EBS that would tear down things for the deployment (like DNS) or potentially delete the real VM. In 7.6 this would just be simply unregister. I don't get how we don't have an unregister for deployed items. 



  • 23.  RE: VRA 8.x Unregister VM

    Posted Dec 14, 2022 08:14 AM

    I got confirmation that we don't have any option or any kind of workaround to unregister a VM in vRA 8. If you move it to another vCenter for any reason, that's it. You can only delete original deployment - but that usually means for me full decommission process - dns removal, cmdb update, AD removal in case of Windows VMs etc. 

    Last year we migrated cc 2000 VMs from NSX-V to NSX-T - different vCenters. In vRA 7 we had to update reservations, it was annoying but it worked. Next year we might have to do similar thing and I can only hope that some future vRA 8.13 will have a solution for this. 

    For some reason product management team doesn't see this "feature" as very important. 



  • 24.  RE: VRA 8.x Unregister VM

    Posted Dec 14, 2022 01:28 PM

    Maybe we can pile on that feature request.  I never feel like those are taken seriously, but if enough of us ask maybe they'll implement.  But I have to guess that they coded themselves into a corner, because unregistering comes with all sorts of required conditions.  Almost like they don't know how to unregister a server that was built in vRA (as opposed to onboarded) or one that not longer meets one of those conditions.  But I think the entire community would love the ability to simply unregister any server resource at any time.  I don't understand how they don't know how to clean those things up on their side.

     

    In the meantime, if deleting the server is viable, we use a custom propery that contains "build" flags.  So for example during the build, if we successfully create a dns record, we turn the dns flag on.  Then when the "destroy" subs kick in, we check those flags before taking action.  So for example, if we never created a dns record and the build failed, we don't try to remove it.  

     

    With that in mind, we have a day-2 to allow users to delete a deployment without removing records from DNS, AD, etc.  It simply flips all of those flags to false via the api, then issues a delete on the deployment.  When it somes to those "destroy" subs, the flag is off and we therefore don't delete from DNS, AD, etc.  So the server ends up deleted but all of the other pieces remain.  Not sure if that's helpful for anyone, but wanted to mention it.



  • 25.  RE: VRA 8.x Unregister VM

    Posted Dec 14, 2022 06:14 PM

    We shut down the vm, remove from vSphere inventory. Then delete the deployment with missing vm (here you can turn off EBS’s or use some filter not to run them). Then add vm to vSphere inventory and turn on.



  • 26.  RE: VRA 8.x Unregister VM

    Posted Jan 10, 2023 10:24 PM

      this reminds me of what we had to do with vCD back in they day... messy but it seemed to work.  The mere fact this does work means that VMware should be able to easily implement this if we can hack at it to get the result we want.



  • 27.  RE: VRA 8.x Unregister VM

    Posted Jan 10, 2023 10:26 PM

    I did get an invite to participate in the vRA customer advisory board coming up in March so I'll be looking to lean on the absence of this hard during the sessions.



  • 28.  RE: VRA 8.x Unregister VM

    Posted Jan 11, 2023 07:57 AM

    BTW our approach is to clone the resources in a deployment and delete the original deployment. Then we are able to onboard this stuff and use unregister etc.



  • 29.  RE: VRA 8.x Unregister VM

    Posted Apr 28, 2023 07:23 AM

    A any update when this feature is going to be added? This make the product far from flexible. Same when moving a deployment to a different project. Also not possible.



  • 30.  RE: VRA 8.x Unregister VM

    Posted May 16, 2023 05:09 PM

    You can move deployments between projects so long as the project has access to the resources the deployment is running on.  This feature was added a few point releases ago.  What version are you on?



  • 31.  RE: VRA 8.x Unregister VM

    Posted May 17, 2023 07:21 AM

    Lagging behind because of side issues with VCF and NSX-T. V8.6.2 (I know not supported anymore).

     



  • 32.  RE: VRA 8.x Unregister VM

    Posted Dec 14, 2022 08:17 PM

    I have already asked my TAM and other contacts in VMware to push this as hard as they can. And also got info that people have been waiting for this feature over 2 years now. 

    Some work is invested into automation: HCX migration to different vCenters should automatically update vRA with new info, cross vCenter migration also and something with SRM - in case of failover to different location/vCenter.

    But no details or commitment what exactly and when. 

    Eventually we will get this feature, just no one knows when...



  • 33.  RE: VRA 8.x Unregister VM

    Posted Jan 10, 2023 02:22 AM

    mnnnn if I select the VM resource inside the deployment, click the Actions drop down on the resource window, there is an Unregister option now. vRA 8.10.



  • 34.  RE: VRA 8.x Unregister VM

    Posted Jan 10, 2023 08:08 AM

    Which version are you using?

    I am on 8.10.0 and have this option only for onboarded resources, not for freshly deployed ones.

    On deployed resources, it is greyed out.

     

    michaelbachmann_0-1673338081117.png

     



  • 35.  RE: VRA 8.x Unregister VM

    Posted Jan 10, 2023 10:22 PM

    That only works for on boarded vm's or at least that was always the case before... another complaint of mine a vSphere on boarded vm and a deployed should be treated the same.  Not sure why it varies and nobody has ever answered me.



  • 36.  RE: VRA 8.x Unregister VM

    Posted Jul 12, 2023 04:42 PM

    I'm lagging behind a bit in updating our vRA environments but I did notice it was announced that unregistering a vm will be supported soon and might already be in the most current version of vRA.  Has anyone had a chance to test this yet?  Curious to hear if it works as expected?



  • 37.  RE: VRA 8.x Unregister VM

    Posted Jul 19, 2023 12:35 PM

    For Onboarded VMs unregister option works fine in vRA 8.11.1.

    Not sure if something has been added in the latest version.



  • 38.  RE: VRA 8.x Unregister VM

    Posted Jul 19, 2023 12:45 PM

    Unregister action for “Provisioned” machine resources is what is missing.
    Also, if you were to add a disk via Day2 to an onboarded machine, the deployment is no longer considered “onboarded” because there is a “provisioned” disk present. 



  • 39.  RE: VRA 8.x Unregister VM

    Posted Jul 19, 2023 12:54 PM

    I have no idea what the details are for the following, but this is scheduled for the saas offering this weekend.

     

    Aria Automation 8.13.0 Features

    Customer Asks

    • Custom Forms Versions Integrated with Content Items
    • Unregister provisioned machines Day2 action
    • Optionally neglect CPU/Memory of powered off VMs in resource quota policy
    • Rebuild virtual machine for Onboarded and Migrated vSphere workloads
    • Day 2 action for specifying changing Azure disk performance tier
    • Onboarded deployments compliant with Aria Automation Consumption policy limits
    • Onboarded deployments compliant with Service Broker policy limits


    Public Cloud

    • Support for service accounts in GCP plugin
    • Increasing inventory limits
    • Resource visualization Improvement
    • Support for load balancer in GCP plugin


    VMware Cloud

    • CCI Admin UI: Namespace Classes
    • CCI Admin UI: Supervisors
    • CCI Admin UI: Supervisor regions
    • CCI Admin UI: Projects


    Platform

    • Aria Automation billable object visibility
    • Command line support for configuring Aria Automation Orchestrator
    • Deprecate Control Center

     

    Consumption{}

    • Add capacity based enforcement solution to vRA


  • 40.  RE: VRA 8.x Unregister VM

    Posted Aug 02, 2023 07:59 PM

    The feature is enabled but the system needs to be not in a 'cluster' or you will get an error.  After a ticket with support, it is stating in your Template should not have 'count' inside the code.  Then you can unregister properly.  So only single machine deployments will be possible at this time.



  • 41.  RE: VRA 8.x Unregister VM

    Posted Aug 09, 2023 09:03 AM

      Did your unregistered VM is listed now in vRA Virtual Machines Discovered list like is described in documentation?
    I did Unregister for single machine deployment and it worked. But now VM is visible only in vCenter and not in vRA "All Resources" or "Virtual Machines" inventoy,



  • 42.  RE: VRA 8.x Unregister VM

    Posted Aug 09, 2023 11:12 AM

    I had a similar experience (SaaS).  I had a deployment that needed moved to a new project but that was greyed out for some reason (who knows).  Instead, I unregistered it so that i could re-oboard it directly to the right project.  But like you, it was gone from the vRA inventory after unregistering.  It did show up again after the next data collection cycle - at least, I think it was the next one, but our data collection seemed stuck or taking too long.

     

    I would not have assumed that a registered vm was related to the inventory objects from a cloud account.  It would be nice to understand how all of this actually works and is connected, but i don't think vmware documents at that level for us.



  • 43.  RE: VRA 8.x Unregister VM

    Posted Aug 09, 2023 05:14 PM

    Good eye, I do not see that item once it is unregistered and I have waited for the inventory to update at least 2 hours.  Even in Onboarding it can't be found either.



  • 44.  RE: VRA 8.x Unregister VM

    Posted Feb 06, 2024 08:11 AM

    Unregister VM works. Having attached disks to a VM. How to "unregister" these ? I could not find an option to this for attached disks on a VM.



  • 45.  RE: VRA 8.x Unregister VM

    Posted Apr 02, 2025 05:18 PM

    https://cloudblogger.co.in/2024/11/15/aria-automation-configuration-properties-the-chamber-of-secrets/#unregister-a-vm-forcefully