Deleting or Inspecting a VCH Fails with a Not a VCH or Resource Pool Not Found Error

When you use vic-machine delete or vic-machine inspect to delete or inspect a virtual container host (VCH) and you specify the address of an ESXi host in the target option, the operation fails with "an error stating that the target is not a VCH or that the resource pool cannot be found".

Problem

Deleting or inspecting a VCH fails with one of the following error messages: 

### Inspecting VCH ####                      
Not a VCH                                    
Failed to get Virtual Container Host vch_name   
Not a VCH                                    
--------------------                         
vic-machine-os failed: inspect failed
### Inspecting VCH ####                      
Failed to get VCH resource pool "path_to_resource_pool": 
resource pool 'path_to_resource_pool' not found
Failed to get Virtual Container Host vch_name   
resource pool 'path_to_resource_pool' not found                                   
--------------------                         
vic-machine-os failed: inspect failed
### Removing VCH ####                      
Not a VCH                                    
Failed to get Virtual Container Host vch_name    
Not a VCH                                    
--------------------                         
vic-machine-os failed: delete failed
### Removing VCH ####                      
Failed to get VCH resource pool "path_to_resource_pool": 
resource pool 'path_to_resource_pool' not found
Failed to get Virtual Container Host vch_name   
resource pool 'path_to_resource_pool' not found                                   
--------------------                         
vic-machine-os failed: delete failed

Cause

You set the target option to the address of an ESXi host that is managed by a vCenter Server instance. If there are multiple ESXi hosts in a cluster, the error that you see depends on the host that you specify in the target option.

  • If you set the target option to the ESXi host on which the VCH is running, you see the error Not a VCH, Failed to get Virtual Container Host.
  • If you set the target option to an ESXi host in the cluster that is not the one on which the VCH is running, you see the error Not a VCH, Failed to get VCH resource pool.

Solution

  1. Run vic-machine ls with the target option set to the same ESXi host.

    The vic-machine ls operation fails but informs you of the address of the vCenter Server instance that manages the ESXi host.

  2. Run vic-machine delete or vic-machine inspect again, setting the target option to the address of the vCenter Server instance that was returned by vic-machine ls.