Re-registering a vCloud virtual machine in vCenter

There may be a time when you need to re-register a vCloud virtual machine in vCenter. This may happen because a VM was un-registered on accident or during troubleshooting.

The VM that I’ll use in this example is named “unregister (0e68e734-ce66-4f29-87d6-15ca99dfc228)”

If we search the vCloud database, we can see the moref of this VM is vm-1946. You will find this moref under the following tables:

computevm
licensing_vm_data
networked_vm
property_map
vapp_vm
vc_task_mapping
vm
vm_inv

select id, name,vc_id ,moref, cloud_uuid,instance_uuid from vm where name like ‘%unregister%’
select vm_inv_id, name,moref ,vc_id, cloud_uuid,instance_uuid from vm_inv where name like ‘%unregister%’

In the VM’s vmx file, we find the following UUIDs

uuid.bios = “42 2a f3 a0 9e 77 01 bd-52 17 99 78 64 8f f3 9d”
vc.uuid = “50 2a 53 a7 38 91 b1 06-a2 97 48 27 92 c7 a4 09”

cloud.uuid = “a8108db8-0778-43a7-bd4c-98ca588afa0d”

If you un-register and re-register the VM, the VM will keep the vc.uuid (instance_uuid in the database) and the cloud.uuid. However, it will get a new moref.

After you re-register the VM, you may see two entries in the vCloud databases’s vm table. Once the vCloud VC inventory services runs or you re-connect vCenter through vCloud, the old entry (moref vm-1939) will disappear.

If you try to start the VM in vCloud, you will receive the following error

reregisteringvcloudvms3

Error: Could not find object with moref “vm-1939” and VC ID “e7d06012-3e60-4b3d-b6c8-22a9a2cff4d1” in inventory category “VirtualMachine”.If you search the vCloud database for this moref, you will find it under the following tables.

select * from computevm where vmmoref = ‘vm-1939’
select * from networked_vm where moref = ‘vm-1939’

We can resolve the issue by replacing the old moref in these tables with the new moref. Find the new moref with the following query:

select moref from vm where name = ‘unregister (0e68e734-ce66-4f29-87d6-15ca99dfc228)’ > vm-1946

Update the tables with the new moref

update computevm set vmmoref = ‘vm-1946’ where vmmoref = ‘vm-1939’
update networked_vm set moref = ‘vm-1946’ where moref = ‘vm-1939’

At this point you were will be able to power on the VM, but there are other steps to take. If you look vCenter, you will see that the VM looks like this: