Discrepancy is observed in the number of Virtual Machines reported in Aria Operations compared to the count displayed in vCenter Server.

Products

• VMware Aria Operations (formerly vRealize Operations) 8.x

Issue/Introduction

• Aria Operations displayed additional VMs when compared to the VM count seen in vCenter.
• vCLS (vSphere Cluster Services) VMs are missing in vCenter UI when compared to Aria Operations UI.

Environment

Aria Operations 8.18.x

Cause

This issue occurs if the user account used to check the VM inventory in vCenter to view the VCLS VMs does not belong to Administrator group. As a result, it appeared as though Aria Operations was reporting an incorrect VM count, while it was actually showing the complete inventory.

Resolution

vCLS (vSphere Cluster Services) VMs are background virtual machines that operate behind the scenes on a VMware cluster. They are not directly accessible via the standard vCenter interface and do not have console access for users. The vCLS VMs are only visible to users who are part of the Administrator group. If a user is not a member of this group, they won’t be able to see the vCLS VMs, even though the VMs are running correctly in the background.

After logging in as [email protected] user in vCenter UI, we are able to see all the vCLS VMs reported in Aria Operations as expected.

To provide the required permissions for the vCenter user, please refer to the steps mentioned in the below kb.

vCLS VMs are missing in the cluster for a user