You can uninstall NSX from a physical host.

You can uninstall NSX from a physical host either from the NSX Manager or from the Windows Powershell terminal on Windows hosts or the CLI terminal on Linux hosts.

Prerequisites

If you are uninstalling NSX from a standalone physical host, verify the following settings:

Procedure

  1. From a browser, log in with admin privileges to an NSX Manager at https://<nsx-manager-ip-address> or https://<nsx-manager-fqdn>.
  2. Select System > Fabric > Hosts.
  3. Select the Standalone tab.
  4. Select the physical host, click Delete. In the confirmation dialog box, by default Uninstall NSX Components is selected. deselect Force Delete, click Delete.

    The NSX software is removed from the host.

  5. If the uninstall fails, select the host and click Delete again. In the confirmation dialog box, check Force Delete and click Delete.
    The system deletes the host transport node from the management plane, but the host might still have NSX software installed.
    Go to the next step only if NSX cannot be uninstalled from the NSX Manager. In the following steps, you will remove NSX from the CLI terminal of physical hosts.
  6. Before deleting NSX from the CLI terminal, verify whether NSX packages are removed from the host.
    On Windows Powershell, run Get-ItemProperty HKLM:\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall\* | Select-Object DisplayName, DisplayVersion, Publisher, InstallDate | Format-Table -AutoSize | findstr NSX

    On Ubuntu CLI terminal, run Ubuntu: apt list --installed | grep nsx

    On RHEL/SLES/CentOS CLI terminal, run rpm -qa | grep nsx

  7. (Linux physical hosts) If the host goes into a failed state and NSX install bundles cannot be removed, then to forcefully remove NSX from the host, run the del nsx command .
    1. Log into the host's command-line interface as root.
    2. Run nsxcli -c del nsx.
    3. Read the warning message. Enter Yes if you want to go ahead with NSX uninstallation.
      Carefully read the requirements and limitations of this command:
      1.Read NSX documentation for 'Remove a Host from NSX or Uninstall NSX Completely'.
      2.Deletion of this Transport Node from the NSX UI or API failed, and this is the last resort.
      3.If this is an ESXi host:
      a.The host must be in maintenance mode.
      b. All resources attached to NSXPGs must be moved out.
      If the above conditions for ESXi hosts are not met, the command WILL fail.
      4.If this is a Linux host:

      a. If KVM is managing VM tenants then shut them down before running this command.

      b. This command should be run from the host console and may fail if run from an SSH client or any other network based shell client.

      c. The 'nsxcli -c del nsx' form of this command is not supported.

      5. If this is a Windows host:

      Note: This will completely remove all NSX-T instances (image and config) from the host.

      6. For command progress check /scratch/log/nsxcli.log on ESXi host or /var/log/nsxcli.log on non-ESXi host.
      Are you sure you want to remove NSX on this host? (yes/no)
      Important: After running the del nsx command, do not use the Resolve functionality in the NSX Manager UI to reprepare the host that is in Disconnected state . If you use the Resolve functionality, the host might go into Degraded state.
    4. On the physical host, verify that system message displayed is Terminated. This message indicates that NSX is completely removed from the host including the application interface that was created for the physical host.
      After running del nsx, NSX packages and the application interface are removed from the host.
  8. On Windows physical hosts, if the host goes into a failed state and NSX install bundles cannot be removed, then to forcefully remove NSX from the host, follow these steps.
    1. Log into Windows powershell interface as one of the administrators.
    2. Go to the NSX directory.

      PS C:\program files\VMware\nsx\nsx-cli> .\nsxclibms.bat -c del nsx

    3. Read the warning message. Enter Yes if you want to go ahead with NSX uninstallation.
      Carefully read the requirements and limitations of this command:
      1.Read NSX documentation for 'Remove a Host from NSX or Uninstall NSX Completely'.
      2.Deletion of this Transport Node from the NSX UI or API failed, and this is the last resort.
      3.If this is an ESXi host:
      a.The host must be in maintenance mode.
      b. All resources attached to NSXPGs must be moved out.
      If the above conditions for ESXi hosts are not met, the command WILL fail.
      4.If this is a Linux host:

      a. If KVM is managing VM tenants then shut them down before running this command.

      b. This command should be run from the host console and may fail if run from an SSH client or any other network based shell client.

      c. The 'nsxcli -c del nsx' form of this command is not supported.

      5. If this is a Windows host:

      Note: This will completely remove all NSX-T instances (image and config) from the host.

      6. For command progress check /scratch/log/nsxcli.log on ESXi host or /var/log/nsxcli.log on non-ESXi host.
      Are you sure you want to remove NSX on this host? (yes/no)
      Important: After running the del nsx command, do not use the Resolve functionality in the NSX Manager UI to reprepare the host that is in Disconnected state . If you use the Resolve functionality, the host might go into Degraded state.
      After running del nsx, the following actions are performed:
      • Application Interface on Windows server is uninstalled.
      • Transport Node configuration is deleted.
      • NSX packages are deleted.

Results

When the NSX software is successfully removed, no packages are listed. If any NSX software packages remain on the host, contact VMware support.

What to do next

Remove the segment port that was connected to the application interface of the physical host.