Unable to delete cloud in Avi load balancer due to stale service engine objects

Products

• VMware Avi Load Balancer

Issue/Introduction

When attempting to delete a cloud connector in Avi (such as vCenter, AWS, or others), the deletion process may fail.

Administrators will encounter the following error message in the Avi user interface or CLI: "Cannot delete, object is referred by: ['VIMgrSEVMRuntime Avi-se-abc']"

Cause

This error occurs if a Service Engine (SE) virtual machine was deleted out-of-band.

If the SE VM is removed directly from the underlying infrastructure (e.g., deleted via the vSphere client or the AWS EC2 console) instead of being gracefully deleted through the Avi Controller, the controller retains stale references to the removed SE. The cloud cannot be deleted while these active references exist.

Resolution

To resolve this issue, the stale Service Engine objects must be explicitly removed from the Avi Controller's configuration database.

Please contact Avi Support for technical assistance.