VCD Managed VM Import Failures After Skipping Named Disk Check During vCenter Migration

Products

• VMware Cloud Director

Issue/Introduction

• You may experience an issue when migrating VMware Cloud Director managed virtual machines between clusters via vCenter.
• You may see an error such as 'failed to import VM as this VM is already managed by Cloud Director'.

Environment

Cloud Director 10.3.3.4

Cause

During the migration process, a key step which was checking the named disks in VCD was skipped. As a result, when attempting to re-import the virtual machines into VCD, the system fails and reports that the VMs are still managed by VCD. VCD marks these VMs as stranded items, creating inconsistencies between vCenter and VCD.

Resolution

Steps Taken to Resolve the Issue:

• Remove the cloud_uuid from the affected VMs.
• Move the VMs out of the cluster and into the correct Resource Pool.
• Un-register and re-register the VMs in the vCenter inventory.
• Import the VMs into the correct Organization vDC.
• Re-attach the named disks to the VMs

 

Migrating the vApp and Named Disks to a New OvDC:

If migrating the vApp and named disks to a new OvDC, follow these steps:

• Power off the VMs
• Detach the named disks from the VMs.
• Migrate the named disks to the new OvDC using the API: Broadcom Article on Migrating Named Disks
• Migrate the vApp to the new OvDC: VMware Documentation on Migrating vApps
• Re-attach the named disks to the VMs.

 

If You Encounter Issues Migrating the vApp:

If issues arise when moving the vApp to the new OvDC, follow these steps to un-register and re-import the VMs:

• Power off the VMs.
• Remove the cloud_uuid from the VMs in Advanced Settings in vCenter.
• Rename the VMs, removing the appended unique ID from the VM name.
• Un-register the VMs from the vCenter inventory.
• Delete the VMs from the VCD UI.
• Re-register the VMs in the vCenter inventory (use Storage vMotion if you want the VM files to match the VM name).
• Import the VMs into the new OvDC in VCD.
• Re-attach the named disks to the VMs.