Use the find-orphan-vms command of the cell management tool to find references to virtual machines that are present in the vCenter database but not in the VMware Cloud Director database.

Virtual machines that are referenced in the vCenter database but not in the VMware Cloud Director database are considered orphan VMs because VMware Cloud Director cannot access them even though they may be consuming compute and storage resources. This kind of reference mismatch can arise for a number of reasons, including high-volume workloads, database errors, and administrative actions. The find-orphan-vms command enables an administrator to list these VMs so that they can be removed or re-imported into VMware Cloud Director. This command has provisions for specifying an alternate trust store, which might be needed if you are working with VMware Cloud Director or vCenter installations that use self-signed certificates.

Use a command with the following form: 
cell-management-tool find-orphan-vms options
Table 1. Cell Management Tool Options and Arguments, find-orphan-vms Subcommand
Option Argument Description
--help (-h) None Provides a summary of available commands in this category.
--enableVerifyHostname None Enable the host name verification part of the SSL handshake.
--host Required IP address or fully-qualified domain name of the VMware Cloud Director installation to search for orphan VMs.
--output-file path name or - Full path name of the file to which the list of orphan VMs should be written. Specify a path name of - to write the list to the standard output.
--password (-p) Required VMware Cloud Director system administrator password.
--port VMware Cloud Director HTTPS port. Specify this only if you do not want this command to use the default VMware Cloud Director HTTPS port.
--trustStore Full path name to a Java trust store file. Specify this only if you do not want this command to use the default VMware Cloud Director trust store file.
--trustStorePassword Password to specified --trustStore Required only if you use --trustStore to specify an alternate trust store file.
--trustStoreType The type of the specified --trustStore (PKCS12, JCEKS, ...) Required only if you use --trustStore to specify an alternate trust store file.
--user (-u) Required VMware Cloud Director system administrator user name.
--vc-name Required Name of vCenter to search for orphan VMs.
--vc-password Required vCenter administrator password.
--vc-user Required vCenter administrator user name.

Finding Orphaned VMs

This example queries a single vCenter server. Because --output-file is specified as -, results are returned on the standard output. 
[root@cell1 /opt/vmware/vcloud–director/bin]# ./cell-management-tool find-orphan-vms \
 --host 10.20.30.40 -u vcadmin -vc-name vcenter1 -vc-password P@55w0rd --vc-user admin --output-file -
Querying for VC by name 10.20.30.40
Querying all vdc's associated with VC: 10.20.30.40 (https://10.20.30.40:443)
Querying all vdc<->resource pool mappings associated with VC: 10.20.30.40 (https://10.20.30.40:443)
Querying all vdc<->VM Moref mappings associated with VC: 10.20.30.40 (https://10.20.30.40:443)
Processing 956 VM's on 5 VDC's across 20 resource pools
Analysis complete.
VDC: "ExampleOrgVDC [urn:vcloud:vdc:1a97...]" (org: "ExampleOrg") ResPool: primary (1a97...) [moref: "resgroup-30515"]
The following 22 orphan VMs were discovered:
Orphan VM: "indDisk100-0-95411 (cbc358a0-e199-4024-8fff-2e5cfce20953)" (parent name: "Test VMs", parent moref : "group-v30533")
...
Orphan VM: "indDisk12-0-51259 (0bbb4115-673e-4c84-ba26-6875159655e0)" (parent name: "Test VMs", parent moref : "group-v30533")