Steps to decommission ESXi hosts properly from the vCenter server.

Products

• VMware vCenter Server

Issue/Introduction

This article provides detailed instructions to properly decommission an ESXi host and remove its associated objects from the vCenter Server.

Environment

• VMware vCenter Server 7.x
• VMware vCenter Server 8.x

Resolution

Follow the steps below to decommission ESXi hosts from the vCenter server.

1. Disable HA and DRS on the cluster. 
   • Disabling and enabling VMware vSphere High Availability (vSphere HA)
   • Disabling VMware Distributed Resource Scheduler for a Cluster
2. Enable retreat mode to delete all the vCLS VMs.
   • Disable vCLS on a Cluster via Retreat Mode
3. Disable Storage DRS on the cluster. 
   • Enabling and disabling Storage DRS (SDRS) in the vSphere Client
4. Put all the hosts in Maintenance mode. 
5. Unmount all the old datastore from all the hosts. 
   • Unmount Datastore
6. Verify if the datastore are still there or not, if yes then delete the datastores.
7. Now at the storage level, remove the zoning for the datastores at storage array level.
8. Remove an uplink from the existing distributed switch. 
9. Create a standard switch on the ESXi host and enabled Management service.
   • Create a vSphere Standard Switch 
   • And assign the uplink removed from step 8. 
   • Assign appropriate VLAN
10. Migrate the vmkernel adapter to standard switch.
    • Migrate a VMkernel Adapter on a Host to a vSphere Standard Switch
    • After migration, you should see vmkernel adapter migrated to standard switch. 
11. Now, remove the host from distributed switch.
    • Remove Hosts from a vSphere Distributed Switch
    • Distributed switch will be removed from the host configuration. 
    • You can verify under, configure >> virtual switch
12. Once, all the hosts are removed from VDS configuration, Delete the vDS switch.
13. Disconnect the ESXi host. 
    • Disconnect a Managed Host
14. Remove the host from the inventory
15. Delete the cluster. (If the cluster is no longer required)

Note: If your ESXi host is not connected to a distributed switch, you can skip the steps between Step 8 and Step 12 (including removing uplinks, migrating VMkernel adapters, and dealing with the distributed switch).

Additional Information

Japanese Version:
vCenter Server から ESXi ホストを適切に廃止する手順