Virtual machines appear as ""Unknown." in Aria Automation (vRA) 8.x after RAV migration (Single vCenter Operation)

Products

• VMware HCX

Issue/Introduction

• You are performing a virtual machine migration using Replication Assisted vMotion (RAV).
• The migration is a Single vCenter Operation (Intra-site migration where both source and destination are managed by the same vCenter Server).
• Following a successful migration, the virtual machine appears as "Unknown." within the Aria Automation (vRA) 8.x inventory.
• Before the migration:
  [root@<esxi-host>:~]  grep -i uuid  /vmfs/volumes/####/<vm-name>/<vm-name>.vmx
uuid.bios = "42 ## ## ## ## ## ## ##-## ## ## ## ## ## ## 5b"
vc.uuid = "50 ## ## ## ## ## ## ##-## ## ## ## ## ## ## 62"
• After the migration, it was observed that the vc.uuid had changed:
  [root@<esxi-host>:~]  grep -i uuid  /vmfs/volumes/####/<vm-name>/<vm-name>.vmx
uuid.bios = "42 ## ## ## ## ## ## ##-## ## ## ## ## ## ## 5b"
vc.uuid = "50 ## ## ## ## ## ## ##-## ## ## ## ## ## ## e9"

Environment

VMware HCX
Aria Automation (vRA) 8.x

Cause

During a Replication Assisted vMotion (RAV) migration, the shadow VM is registered before the source VM is deregistered. In a single vCenter migration scenario, this overlap causes a UUID conflict, which results in a new vCenter instance UUID (vc.uuid) being assigned to the migrated VM.

As a result of the vc.uuid changing during the migration, vRA loses tracking of the VM and will consequently display its status as 'Missing' or 'Unknown'.

Note: Regarding which UUID the guest OS sees, it only recognizes the BIOS UUID. Unlike the instanceUuid, vCenter does not enforce uniqueness for the BIOS UUID across VMs. Therefore, the migrated VM inherits the source's BIOS UUID completely unchanged.

Resolution

This is a known issue impacting VMware HCX and VMware Aria Automation.

Workaround:

Reset the vc.uuid of a VM monitored by Aria Operations