Error: "One or more VMs found on host during VCF 9.1 Greenfield deployment"

Products

• VMware SDDC Manager / VCF Installer

Issue/Introduction

• A Greenfield deployment fails during the "Validate VCF Domain Input Data" task. The vSphere cluster configuration step reports a UI error indicating that one or more virtual machines were found on the host
• Following error is observed at  /var/log/vmware/vcf/domainmanager/domainmanager.log at VCF installer.
  HOST_VM_VALIDATION_FAILED One or more VMs found on host com.vmware.evo.sddc.common.util.ValidationException: One or more VMs found on host <host_fqdn>

Environment

VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) 9.1

Cause

SDDC Manager pre-deployment validation fails because an existing virtual machine is registered to the ESXi host inventory. VMware Cloud Foundation requires hosts to be in a clean state without pre-existing workloads before integration.

Resolution

1. Connect directly to the target ESXi host using the Host Client (https://<ESXI_IP/FQDN>/ui).
2. Navigate to Virtual Machines.
3. Power off all running virtual machines.
4. Unregister all virtual machines from the host inventory (Right-click > Unregister).
5. Verify the host inventory is empty.
6. Retry the "Validate VCF Domain Input Data" task in SDDC Manager.