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Knowledge Base

Inaccessible virtual machines are named as Unknown VM (2172)

Last Updated: 11/8/2023Categories: TroubleshootingTotal Views: 290206Language:
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Learn how VMware Skyline Advisor and Skyline Health Diagnostics work together to provide proactive intelligence and self-service log analysis.

Use Skyline Advisor to avoid issues before they occur across VCF, vSphere, vSAN, NSX, vROps & Horizon. Skyline Findings are based on top KBs, VMSAs/CVEs and design best practices.

Use Skyline Health Diagnostics to root cause vSphere & vSAN logs when an issue occurs. Skyline Health Diagnostic Findings are based on top KBs and VMSA/CVEs. You can use the Skyline Health Diagnostics tool in online or offline mode.

If you require additional help from technical support, please use Skyline Advisor to initiate a Log Assist to reduce time to upload logs. TSEs can also initiate logs to reduce effort.

Details

Virtual machines show in VMware VirtualCenter/vCenter Server as Unknown VM.

Solution

When an ESXi/ESX host is rebooted or a host agent is restarted, it needs to reload the host agent configuration of each registered virtual machine (.vmx file). If the .vmx file is inaccessible, the ESXi/ESX host is unable to read the configured name of the virtual machine, and it defaults to Unknown VM.

Temporarily losing access to storage does not cause a virtual machine's name to be permanently set to Unknown VM. For more information, see Identifying Fibre Channel, iSCSI, and NFS storage issues on ESX/ESXi hosts (1003659).

When storage problems are addressed, restart the management agents on this host. For more information, see Restarting the Management agents on an ESXi or ESX host (1003490).

If the virtual machine is still renamed as Unknown VM, examine the /etc/vmware/hostd/vmInventory.xml file on the host showing which virtual machines were formerly registered. Make a note of the virtual machines and the datastores on which they are located and then re-register the virtual machines.

To re-register a virtual machine:

Right-click the Unknown VM entry and click Remove From Inventory.

Browse to the appropriate datastore for the virtual machine and open the folder.

Right-click the *.vmx file and click Add to Inventory.

Power on the virtual machine.

Repeat Steps 1 to 4 for all unknown virtual machines.

For more information, see A virtual machine cannot be powered on and shows as unknown (1008752) and Powering off an unresponsive virtual machine on an ESX host (1004340).

Additional Information

For translated versions of this article, see:

Español: Las máquinas virtuales inaccesibles son nombradas Unknown VM (2034911)

Português: Máquinas virtuais inacessíveis são denominadas como Unknown VM (2036607)

日本語: アクセスできない仮想マシンが Unknown VM という名前になる (2078413)

简体中文: 不可访问的虚拟机被命名为 Unknown VM (2075217)

Related Information

VMware Skyline Health Diagnostics for vSphere - FAQ

Detectable by VMware SkylineTM

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End Of General Availability of the Free vSphere Hypervisor (ESXi 7.x and 8.x) (2107518)

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