Organization VDC folder has been incorrectly provisioned under the folder structure of a different Tenant within the vCenter Server inventory

Products

• VMware Cloud Director

Issue/Introduction

• Organization VDC folder provisioned to the wrong tenant folder

• The VDC folder for one Tenant is physically located inside the parent folder belonging to another Tenant.

• This structural misalignment is preventing backup platforms such as Cohesity from correctly identifying and protecting the objects, as it detects a multi-org ownership conflict.

• Backup platforms such as Cohesity give an error when attempting to register a VM or Organization VDC similar to "Used by other org" or "Invalid Parent".

Environment

VMware Cloud Director 10.6.1.2

Cause

This is typically caused by a manual move of folders within vCenter that was performed outside of Cloud Director(VCD)’s control and not recommended/supported.

Cloud Director maintains a mapping of vCenter Managed Object Reference IDs (MoRefs) in its SQL database (vcloud). When a folder is nested incorrectly in vCenter, the Hierarchy of the objects remains valid in the vCenter Database (VCDB), but the metadata passed to third-party integrations (like Cohesity) via the Cloud Director API reflects the incorrect parentage, causing ownership validation failures.

Resolution

Moving folders in vCenter that are managed by Cloud Director is supported but requires a specific synchronization sequence to ensure the VCD database updates its inventory pointers.

Here the steps to follow to resolve the issue :

1. Pre-Move Validation

• Backup: Ensure you have a fresh backup of the Cloud Director Database and vCenter Server.

• Identify IDs: Note the name of the folder and the target root folder in vCenter.

2. Perform the Move (vCenter)

1. Log in to the vCenter Server as an Administrator.

2. Locate the Organization VDC folder currently under the wrong parent.

3. Drag and Drop the folder into the correct Tenant root folder or the "Workloads" top-level folder as defined in your environment.

Note: Do not rename the folder during this process.

3. Refresh and Synchronize (Cloud Director)

Cloud Director will eventually see this change via the listener, but for immediate resolution:

1. Log in to the Cloud Director Provider Portal.

2. Go to Resources > Infrastructure Resources > vCenters.

3. Select the vCenter Server where the move occurred.

4. Click Reconnect (this often triggers a deeper inventory sync).

5. Wait 5–10 minutes for vCenter to properly reconnect. 

6. (Optional/Advanced) If the change does not reflect, restart the Cloud Director cell service one by one to force a full inventory refresh: systemctl vmware-vcd.service restart

Note: restarting the service one at the time can avoid downtime.