Virtualization is future: How to bring ORPHAN Virtual Machine online.(Grayed out Virtual Machine.)

How to bring ORPHAN Virtual Machine online.(Grayed out Virtual Machine.)

Hi All,

Good day to you..

There are so many issues we seen while the Virtual machine becomes "Grayed Out" and inaccessible through vCenter or any other way . So many people still wonder to "how to bring it back in the previous condition" . I am sharing the process to make it easy, so you can use it and make your task easy..

Scenario : The virtual machine is grayed out and in vCenter server and (orphaned) started showing.

Orphaned Virtual Machine

To bring it back online please follow these steps.

(Most Important : Before doing this task you must note down the orphaned virtual machine Name, Host/Cluster Name, Resource pool if any, Datastore, Virtual machine folder path in Specified datastore, as it will be required while adding them back to the vcenter. Also remove the orhaned virtual machine from inventory of the vcenter by clicking on " Remove from inventory" . )

1. First of all select the Orphaned VM and find the Datastore & the folder of the virtual machine where it resides. In my example its "Datastore1"

2. Now go to the specified datastore by selecting the configuration> Storage option on vcenter server or ESX (in case of stand alone host) .

3. "Right Click " on the residing datastore and click on "Browse Datastore".

4. Go to the specified folder of orphaned virtual machine . And select the file which extension name will be ".vmx" followed by the virtual machine name and select "right click > "Add to Inventory".

5. After Selection it, It will open "Add to Inventory" wizard . Now provide the Name of the original virtual machine, Vcentr name, ESX Host details, Resource pool, and it will finish the wizard with the summary details.