VM is missing from vCenter and ESXi Client inventory even though it is running and accessible

Products

• VMware vSphere ESXi

Issue/Introduction

• A VM is running and is accessible on the network 
• The VM is missing from vCenter Server and ESXi client inventory 
• The VM is not seen when running the command via esxcli:
  
  • vim-cmd vmsvc/getallvms
• The VMX process is visible when checking via:
  • esxcli vm process list
• A storage issue on the datastore where the VM was running has taken place (such as APD/PDL) but has now been recovered 

Environment

• VMware vCenter Server 8.x 
• VMware vSphere ESXi 8.x

Cause

Storage outage caused a split brain scenario and hostd could not locate the .vmx file while the vmx process was still running on the hosts memory 

Resolution

1. Try to restart the ESXi management agents

• /etc/init.d/hostd restart
• /etc/init.d/vpxa restart

 

2. If the VM is not back in inventory, re-register via esxcli and restart management agents again

• vim-cmd solo/registervm /vmfs/volumes/DatastoreName/VMFolder/VMName.vmx
• /etc/init.d/hostd restart
• /etc/init.d/vpxa restart