How to remove vSphere HA FDM vib from ESXi

Products

• VMware vSphere ESXi

Issue/Introduction

vSphere HA FDM agent should normally install in vSphere through unconfiguring then reconfiguring vSphere High Availability (vSphere HA) in vCenter Server at the cluster level or at the ESXi host level.

Problems with this not working can often be solved by manually uninstalling, then reinstalling the vSphere HA agent directly on an affected ESXi host. This article is to assist with removing the vSphere HA agent VIB manually from the ESXi host.

Environment

VMware vSphere ESXi 6.x , 7.x , 8.x

Resolution

 

• Place the ESXI host in Maintenance Mode.
• Disable Lockdown Mode on the host in the cluster if it had been enabled 
• Connect to the ESXi host with SSH
• Run the command to confirm the vSphere HA FDM agent vib is installed: 

esxcli software vib list | grep fdm

• Run this command to remove FDM vib from the ESXi host: 

esxcli software vib remove -n vmware-fdm

Note: This is not applicable from ESX 9.0 onwards.

• Exit maintenance mode.
• Check the status of HA using the Web client to confirm that HA is not working. If there are error messages at this stage, note these and refer to VMware documentation or contact VMware support for further troubleshooting.

Additional Information

FDM stands for Fault Domain Manager. This was the original name for the vSphere HA feature.

Error: "vSphere HA agent cannot be correctly installed or configured"