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David Hill, my VMware vCloud partner in crime, has already put together a post about how to completely Uninstall vCloud Director, that also explains the manual removal of the vCloud Host Agent for version 1.0.1. As we are seeing with my recent post about Properly Stopping a vCloud Cell, some things are changed with 1.5. In fact removing the agent is another one of these little things.
If you are using 1.0.1 you will notice that the agent has an un-installer in the uninstalls directory of /opt/vmware, but on 1.5 there is not such a directory. This is because 1.5 uses the new VIB model of installing agents. ESXi 4.1 used the bundle model for updates so the method is completely different. In order to even see the installed agents you need to now use the “esxcli” commands with various switches. I wanted to provide a quick post of the new commands needed to uninstall the vCloud Director agent for version 1.5
To locate the name of the new vCloud Director 1.5 Agent (ESXi 5.0):
~ # esxcli software vib list | grep vcloud vcloud-agent 1.5.0-453916 VMware VMwareCertified 2011-08-25
To remove the vCloud Director 1.5 agent manually (ESXi 5.0):
~ # esxcli software vib remove -n vcloud-agent
Once you have the agent removed you can try to “Prepare” the host again from inside the vCloud Director 1.5 portal. If you have a mixed environment vCloud Director 1.5 still drops the old agent to the 4.1 hosts so you may still need to use the old uninstaller shown below.
To remove the vCloud Director 1.0.1 agent manually (ESXi 4.1):
/opt/vmware/uninstallers # ./vslad-uninstall.sh
I would rather split this by ESX version not by vCD version.
ESX(i) 4.x -> /opt/vmware/uninstallers
ESXi 5.0 -> esxcli
Otherwise, someone will try to call esxcli on a 4.x ESX because they have a 1.5 install of vCD
valid point, I will look to adjust. I was thinking based on the vCD version as 1.0.1 will not even install on ESXi 5.0
Good information. I had to do this a couple of weeks back in our lab and found it difficult to find the correct syntax for “unpreparing” a host managed by vCD v1.5, as some of the structures are different from earlier version of vCD and vSphere
From the helpful folks on VMTN forums I was provided with this link which addresses the issue
http://kb.vmware.com/kb/2005927
VMTN link @ http://communities.vmware.com/message/1823711#1823711
Sadly that KB assumes you have 1.5 connected to a 4.1 host. Interesting that it does not address a vSphere 5.0 host. Also there is more steps to revert than just those IMHO, like restoring the Oracle DB assuming you backed it up before the upgrade.
Agreed there is more to it. In our case, in a test lab, our servers were “prepared” for a retired instance of vCD and had not been removed properly. So we needed to free them from that relationship and then prepare them for the new vCD environment.
For me the interesting info for unpreparing the hosts was
ESX/ESXi 4.x host:
/opt/vmware/uninstallers/vslad-uninstall.sh
ESXi 5.x host:
esxcli software vib remove -n vcloud-agent
Thanks Chris
Funny how often I refer to this post myself! 🙂