Disabling Fault Tolerance manually on the ESXi host when vCenter Server is not available

Products

• VMware vCenter Server

Issue/Introduction

This article provides steps to disable Fault Tolerance through the ESXi host when vCenter server is not available.

Environment

VMware vCenter Server 6.7.x
VMware vCenter Server 6.5.x
VMware vCenter Server 7.0.x

Resolution

1. Open an SSH session to the ESXi host that has virtual machine on which Fault Tolerance needs to be disabled.
2. Change the directory to: /vmfs/volumes/[datastore_name]/[vm_name].
3. Create a backup copy of the vm_name.vmx file.
4. Open the vm_name.vmx file using a text editor. For information on editing files, see Adding/Deleting/Editing a host entry on vCenter server or ESXi host using vi editor.
5. Find and delete the line beginning with UUID.FT.
   For example: uuid.ft = “52 85 35 7b ## ## ## ##-## ## ## ## 8c 90 4d 71”
6. Save and close the file.
7. In the vm_name directory, find the file named shared.vmft.
8. Create a backup of this file and delete or rename the original file.

Additional Information

Adding/Deleting/Editing a host entry on vCenter server or ESXi host using vi editor