Remove / Replace VMware Cloud Director Availability Instances from Cloud Site.

Products

• VMware Cloud Director

Issue/Introduction

• This article helps in removing VMware Cloud Director Availability Instance from Cloud Site.
• Procedure to follow when replacing an old VMware Cloud Director Availability instance, to prevent the error message "VM already protected" after installing the new VMware Cloud Director Availability instance.

Environment

VMware Cloud Director Availability 4.x.

Cause

A cleanup of the Ongoing Replications followed by un-pairing a remote site is needed before proceeding with the removal or replacement of VMware Cloud Director Availability Instances from the Cloud Site. Else, it leads to the error message - "VM already protected" after installing a NEW VMware Cloud Director Availability Instances backed by Cloud Director.

Resolution

To proceed with the removal / replacement of VMware Cloud Director Availability Instance from Cloud Site:

Step1: Stop all replications from and to the VMware Cloud Director Availability instance you are removing.

• Log in to the VMware Cloud Director Availability instance that you are removing.
• In the left pane, click Incoming Replications.
• Select all the replications and click Delete.
• Repeat this step in Outgoing Replications and delete all the replications.

Step2: Delete the established trust with all peer sites.

• In the left pane under Configuration, click Peer Sites.
• In the Cloud sites page, select a cloud site, then click Delete.
• In the Delete Peer Cloud Site window, to delete the cloud site pairing, click Delete.
• Repeat the above steps until you delete the pairing with all peer cloud sites.

Step3: Delete the established trust with all on-premises sites from the cloud site.

• On the Peer Sites page, under On-premises sites, click Delete.
• In the Delete On-Premises Site window, to delete the on-premises site pairing, click Delete.
• Repeat the above step until you delete pairing with all peer on-premises sites.

Note:

• If the on-premises site is still paired, delete the pairing from the cloud site, then from the on-premises site delete the remaining pairing with the cloud site. For information about deleting pairing from the on-premises site, see Unpair a remote site.
• If from the on-premises site the cloud site is already unpaired, then delete the remaining record in the cloud site.
  
  

Step4: Remove the VMware Cloud Director Availability plug-in from VMware Cloud Director.

• In the left pane, click Settings.
• Under Service endpoints next to VMware Cloud Director Address, click Remove plugin.
• In the Remove VCD UI plugin window, click Remove.

Step5: If the management interface of VMware Cloud Director Availability is not available, remove the VMware Cloud Director Availability plug-in from VMware Cloud Director by using its Service Provider Admin Portal.

• Go to https://vcloud.example.com/provider and log in to the Service Provider Admin Portal of VMware Cloud Director by using the system administrator user credentials.
• From the top navigation bar, select More > Customize Portal.
• Select the check box next to the name of the VMware Cloud Director Availability plug-in, then click Delete.
• To confirm removing the plug-in, click Save.

Step6: For the VMware Cloud Director Availability instance you are removing, delete all the virtual machines of its appliances from the vCenter Server instance.

• Power-off the Cloud Director Availability Instances (Manager, Tunnel and Replicator).
• Delete from vCenter Server Inventory.

This VMware Cloud Director Availability instance is now uninstalled from the cloud site backed by VMware Cloud Director.

 

Additional Information

For more details on the VMware Cloud Director Availability product documentation, see: https://techdocs.broadcom.com/us/en/vmware-cis/cloud-director/availability/4-7/what-is-vcda.html