There are various ways to retrieve the vCenter Server UUID.
To find the vCenter UUID, there are six alternative methods:
1: HTML5 UI for vSAN 6.7, 7.0, & 8.0 includes the UUID under:vSAN Cluster > Monitor > vSAN > Support2: Using the Managed Object Browser (MOB) (This works for all versions of vSAN)Point a web browser to
https://<vc>/mob, log in using
[email protected] credentials (or whatever you may have changed the domain too), click on RetrieveServiceContent, then Invoke. See the UUID in
instanceUuid returned.
3: Using PowerCLI
In the PowerCLI terminal, run command:
Get-VC -Server <hostname or IP Address> | fl
See the vCenter UUID output under InstanceUuid.
4: Using vCenter Server Appliance shell (This works for all versions of vSAN)
From the vCenter Server Appliance shell (Example via. SSH, and then into bash), grep instanceUuid /etc/vmware-vpx/instance.cfg.
root@vcsa01 [ ~ ]# grep instanceUuid /etc/vmware-vpx/instance.cfg
instanceUuid=########-####-####-####-########d958
Note: For the Windows-Based vCenter Server, the default location is \ProgramData\VMware\VMware VirtualCenter\instance.cfg.
5: Using ESXi shell (vSAN 6.6.1/ESXi 6.5 Update 1 and Later)
From an ESXi shell (Example via. SSH), run command grep -i vcUUID /etc/vmware/esx.conf. See the vCenter UUID under /vsan/configGen/vcUuid.
6: Using ESXi shell (pre-vSAN 6.6.1/ESX 6.5 Update 1 when HA is enabled)
From an ESXi shell (Example via. SSH), run command grep faultDomain /etc/opt/vmware/fdm/hostlist. See the vCenter UUID under faultDomainId.
7: Using ESXi shell (All vSAN versions)
From an ESXi shell (Example via SSH) run command esxcli vsan cluster get|grep "Config Generation:"
[root@esxi01:~] esxcli vsan cluster get|grep "Config Generation:"
Config Generation: ########-####-####-####-########d958 8 2023-04-30T15:33:00.416