Collision error for vCenter in Business Services Console when using cloned vCenter Servers

Products

• VMware Usage Meter

Issue/Introduction

• In the Business Services Console (BSC), a Collision error is displayed for a vCenter component.

• The Remediation Details in BSC show the following message:

  "Product is registered in two different VCF Usage Meter instances that report the same data. Please ensure that each product is metered by exactly one appliance."

• Multiple VCF Usage Meter appliances are reporting the exact same Product Instance ID (vCenter Instance UUID) to the BSC.

Environment

VCF Usage Meter 9.x

Cause

This issue occurs when a vCenter Server has been cloned, and both the original and the cloned vCenter Servers (or multiple cloned instances) are registered to VCF Usage Meter appliances.

Cloned vCenter Servers retain the exact same Instance UUID (instanceUuid) as the source. Usage Meter collects this UUID and reports it as the Product Instance ID. Because the Business Services Console relies on the vCenter Instance ID to uniquely identify an environment, receiving data from multiple Usage Meters with the same vCenter ID triggers a Collision error. This error occurs even if the actual virtual machines (VMs) being metered in each vCenter environment are completely different.

Resolution

By design, every vCenter Server in a production environment must have a unique Instance UUID.

There is no officially supported procedure or workaround to manually change the Instance UUID of a cloned vCenter Server. To resolve the Collision error and ensure a supported vSphere configuration, you must completely redeploy the cloned vCenter Server as a new instance.

Important Note: Even if the metered VMs are unique across the cloned vCenters (meaning double billing does not directly occur), running vCenters with duplicate Instance UUIDs is an not recommended architecture.  duplicate UUIDs can lead to unexpected failures in other integrated solutions. Redeployment is strongly recommended.