Remove a Host from vCenter Server

Remove a managed host from vCenter Server to stop all vCenter Server monitoring and management of that host.

If possible, remove managed hosts while they are connected. Removing a disconnected host does not remove the vCenter Server agent from the managed host.

Prerequisites

Make sure that NFS mounts are active. If NFS mounts are unresponsive, the operation fails.

Procedure

1. Navigate to Home > Hosts and Clusters and select a host.
2. (Optional) If the host is part of a cluster, you must put it in maintenance mode.
   1. Right-click the host and select Maintenance Mode > Enter Maintenance Mode from the pop-up menu.
      If all virtual machines on the host are not powered off, the host does not enter maintenance mode.

      If the host is inside a DRS-enabled cluster, entering maintenance mode causes DRS to attempt to evacuate powered-on virtual machines from the host using vMotion.

   2. In the confirmation dialog box that appears, click Ok.
      The confirmation dialog box also asks if you want to evacuate virtual machines that are not powered on from the host. This is useful if you want those virtual machines to remain registered to a host within the cluster.
      The host icon changes and the term “Maintenance Mode” is added to the name in parentheses.
3. If the host is connected to a distributed switch, first you must remove the host from the switch.
   For more information, see "Remove Hosts from a vSphere Distributed Switch" in the vSphere Networking documentation.
4. Right-click the appropriate host in the inventory pane, and select Remove from Inventory from the pop-up menu.
5. In the confirmation dialog box that appears, click Yes to remove the host.
   vCenter Server removes the host and associated virtual machines from the vCenter Server environment. vCenter Server then returns the status of all associated processor and migration licenses to available.