vApps fail to power off or suspend after Runtime Lease expires in VMware Cloud Director

Products

• VMware Cloud Director

Issue/Introduction

Users may observe the following symptoms in VMware Cloud Director:

• vApp Runtime and Storage leases do not function as expected.

• vApps remain powered on even after their runtime lease has expired.

• vApps report the status "Preparing to power off" indefinitely but never complete the action.

• Expired vApps are not suspended or deleted according to the lease policy.

Environment

Vmware vCloud Director 10.x

Cause

This issue occurs when the LeaseManagementJob is stuck or not running on the Cloud Director cell. This background job is responsible for enforcing lease policies and is executed on one of the cells in the server group.

You can verify the status of the job by running the following command on the cells:

/opt/vmware/vcloud-director/bin/cell-management-tool cell -tt

If the job is stuck, you will see output similar to the example below, where the Status is STATUS_PROGRESS but the Previous Start Time is significantly in the past (e.g., several days or weeks old):

+--------------------------------------+-------------------------+-------------------------+-----------------+--------------------------------
| UUID                                   | Previous Start Time     | Next Start Time         | Status          | Job Name
+--------------------------------------+-------------------------+-------------------------+-----------------+--------------------------------
...
| {{JOB-UUID}}                         | 2025-11-26 12:52:24.384    |                         | STATUS_PROGRESS   | LeaseManagementJob
...
+--------------------------------------+-------------------------+-------------------------+-----------------+--------------------------------

In this example, the job has been stuck in progress since November 26th..
Note: This job is expected to run every 2 hours. 

Resolution

To resolve this issue, you must restart the Cloud Director service on the cell where the job is stuck. This will reset the scheduler and allow the LeaseManagementJob to resume normal operation.

1. SSH into the Cloud Director cell identified in the Cause section.

2. Follow KB 308791 to restart VMware Cloud Director Service.

Note: Broadcom Support is actively investigating the root cause of this issue. To assist with the investigation, please open a Support Request and attach the Cloud Director log bundle if the issue occurred recently.