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Removing a cluster in VMware vSphere Storage Appliance 1.0.x and 5.1.x (2004838)

Purpose

A vSphere Storage Appliance (VSA) cluster cannot be removed using either the VSA Manager or using the vSphere Client as the VSA virtual machines are locked for certain operations.

This article describes a process to delete a VSA Cluster, including:

  • Removing VSA tags from the datacenter where the cluster is installed
  • Unmounting VSA datastores from all mounted hosts
  • Destroying VSA datastores
  • Deleting all VSA virtual machines from ESXi hosts

    Caution: Deleting VSA virtual machines is irreversible and results in data loss for everything stored on the VSA cluster.

Resolution

Caution: These steps result in data loss.

To delete a VSA 1.1 Cluster and its data:

  1. Un-register, migrate, or Storage vMotion off all virtual machines hosted on the VSA cluster's datastores.

    Note: The datastores cannot be removed if they are in use by virtual machines.

  2. Connect to the vCenter Server where VSA Manager is installed.
  3. As the Administrator, run these commands:

    cd "%PROGRAMFILES%"\VMware\Infrastructure\tomcat\webapps\VSAManager\WEB-INF\classes
    java -cp .;..\lib\* com.vmware.sva.manager.tools.DeleteSVACluster Administrator VC-Admin-Password

    This puts your hosts back to a "greenfield" configuration (all networking removed, and the cluster is also removed).

    Caution: This step deletes the VSA cluster node virtual machines and cannot be reverted.

  4. VSA manager notifies you that the cluster is unavailable. To ensure that VSA manager shows the correct information, restart these services on the vCenter/VSA Manager Server:

    • Restart the VSA cluster service
    • Restart the VMware VirtualCenter Server service

  5. Log out of the vSphere Client and log into vCenter Server again. The VSA Manager now shows the VSA Installer screen which can be used to reinstall the VSA cluster.

    Note: You may need to enable the VSA plug-in if the VSA Manager tab is missing.

To delete a VSA 5.1 Cluster:

Notes:
  • VSA Manager provides a cleanup script (cleanup.bat) that you use to delete a VSA cluster if you no longer use it, or to clean up the ESXi host configuration if you failed to create a VSA cluster and want to make another attempt.
  • You cannot delete the VSA cluster by uninstalling VSA Manager. To delete the VSA cluster, you must use the cleanup.bat script that is installed by VSA Manager.
  • If cleanup.bat is run with no parameters, then all DCs being managed by the current VC are deleted.

  1. In Windows Server 2003 or 2008, open the Command Prompt.
  2. At the Command Prompt, change directory to the cleanup.bat script directory:

    cd C:\Program Files\VMware\Infrastructure\tomcat\webapps\VSAManager\WEB-INF\test\tool\

  3. Run the cleanup.bat script and provide Administrator credentials for vCenter Server:

    cleanup.bat user password datacenter_name

    For datacenter_name, type the name of a datacenter that accommodates the VSA cluster you want to remove. If you do not provide the name, the script removes all available clusters.

    Note: The cleanup.bat script unmounts and deletes the VSA datastores, stops and deletes the VSA virtual machines, and reverts the ESXi hosts to their default configuration. The script removes additional virtual switches and uplinks and preserves only the default port groups for the default virtual switch. After the process finishes, the ESXi hosts might appear with an alert icon in the vCenter Server inventory. This is because the script deletes the redundant uplinks for the default virtual switch. The VSA Manager tab shows a message that the VSA cluster is now unavailable.

  4. Clear the Network uplink redundancy lost alarms for each ESXi host.
  5. Refresh the VSA Manager tab by restarting the vSphere Client or the vSphere web client, and the Tomcat Web service:

    1. Quit the client.
    2. At the Command Prompt, type net stop vctomcat and press Enter to stop the Tomcat Web service. The Tomcat Web service stops.
    3. At the Command Prompt, type net start vctomcat and press Enter to restart the Tomcat Web service. The Tomcat Web service starts.
    4. Start the client and navigate to the VSA Manager tab. The VSA Manager tab shows the VSA Installer wizard.

      Note: You can now create a new VSA cluster with the same ESXi hosts.

Additional Information

For more information, see Delete a VSA Cluster in the VMware vSphere 5.1 Documentation Center.

See Also

This Article Replaces

2002363

Update History

01/14/2012 - Added note about setting the JAVA_HOME variable 09/11/2012 - Replaced the steps in the resolution 11/13/2012 - Added VSA 5.1 to products and added steps for VSA 5.1

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