Proactive hardware management "Failed to contact an HSM alarm" persists after removing Dell OpenManage.

Products

• VMware vCenter Server

Issue/Introduction

• After uninstalling the Dell OpenManage plugin and removing it from the vCenter UI Client Plugins page, the vCenter environment continuously generates a "Proactive hardware management: Failed to contact an HSM" alarm.
  
  
• Below alarm persists and retriggers immediately after being acknowledged:
  
  

• The extension "com.dell.plugin.OpenManager_HWSupportManager" in vCenter MOB does not exist or, is already removed. This extension can be removed using the steps detailed in Unregister Hardware Support Manager (HSM).

Environment

VMware vCenter Server

Cause

The Dell OpenManage appliance registered a Hardware Support Manager (HSM) under the vCenter Proactive Hardware Management (PHM) API namespace. When the Dell appliance was decommissioned and the plugin was removed, it failed to gracefully unregister this service, leaving a stale entry (com.dell.plugin.OpenManager_HWSupportManager) in the vCenter database. This stale key forces the native com.vmware.phm service to continuously poll a non-existent hardware manager.

Resolution

• Log in to the vSphere Client.

• Navigate to Developer Center > API Explorer.

• Select the vcenter API.

• Expand the phm > hardware-support-managers section.

• Execute the DELETE /api/vcenter/phm/hardware-support-managers/{key} method.

• For the key parameter, enter: com.dell.plugin.OpenManager_HWSupportManager.

• Verify the response code is 200 or 204 to confirm the key is deleted.

• Acknowledge the alarm in the vSphere Client to reset it to green.