Unable to remove Veeam CDP Filter driver from vSphere cluster as the CDP VIB is getting reinstalled by vCenter on Hosts.

Products

• VMware vSphere ESXi

Issue/Introduction

Veeam CDP I/O filter driver is in use with vSphere environment and customer want to remove Veeam CDP Filter from one specific vSphere Cluster.

• Uninstall Veeam CDP filter on vSphere cluster from Veaam product (Veeam offical KB) Updating and Uninstalling I/O Filter - Failed
• Unable to uninstall Veeam CDP filter manually following Veeam official KB How to Uninstall Veeam CDP VAIO Filter Driver Manually 

 

• Post rebooting host the VIB gets reinstalled on the host 

 

Veaam investigation points out that the VIB is getting reinstalled on hosts by the vCenter

Environment

VMware vCenter Server 8.x
VMware vSphere ESXi 8.x

Cause

• Veeam CDP VIB was added to Custom ISO while deploying ESXi Hosts 
• Veeam CDP is also added to vCenter Image depot and a custom Baseline is created for all vSphere Clusters

Resolution

• Veeam CDP could not be found in vCenter Baseline > Vendor add-ons / components. Instead it was a part of custom Image customer had created while deploying the ESXi hosts using USB device.
  
  
• ESXi host is already at latest version, have to reapply the same version but using vLCM Image so that we don't have to remove the Veeam CDP VIB from vCenter Image depot/ components as it would disrupt customer's other clusters managed by the same vCenter, where Veeam CDP is still in use.
  
  
• Use vLCM Image instead of Baseline, remediate each host followed with manual removal of VIB using command 'esxcli software vib remove -n veecdp'. Remediate the whole cluster with same approach.