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No VMs show in Management Console from VMware ESX Appliance <Fix included>

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I was doing a trial of Acronis Backup Advanced 11.5.  I installed the VMware ESX appliance to one of our ESXi servers and did the setup as instructed.  My management console would show the Agent from the appliance connecting but would not show any VMs from my ESXi Server.  With much trial and error I finally broke down and contacted support and with much more trial and error still nothing.

In looking around and several sites on the web I discovered how to get to the Linux behind the appliance and started poking around.  Here is the solution for my problem that may help someone else...

1.  On the Console of the ESXi Appliance,  Hold Ctrl+Alt+Shift+Space Bar+F2.  This will take you to a Linux prompt.

2.  Type:  vi /etc/Acronis/VirtualWare.config and press enter.

3.  Find section that says: 

    <value name="UseInstanceUuid" refcount="10" type="Tdword">
      "1"
   </value>

4.  Use arrow keys to put cursor on the 1.  Press R then 0.  This will replace the 1 with a 0.

5.  Press : then wq <Enter>  This will write and quit.

6.  Now just reboot the ESX Appliance and VMs will appear in Management console.

 

Hopefully these steps will help someone out in the future.

Scott

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Posts: 22
Comments: 3800

Hi Scott,

Apparently in your case there were duplicate InstanceUUID values of some VM objects which caused VMs representation inconsistencies in Acronis Backup GUI. The solution you describe is reverting the VMs identification mechanism from Instance UUID to BIOS UUID values and it's present in the following article in our KB: https://kb.acronis.com/content/38130

P.S. In general using InstanceUUID vSphere values is more reliable than BIOS UUID ones according to VMware recommendations (having duplicate InstanceUUIDs may cause problems in vCenter-managed environments) which is why we're using this method in Acronis products.

Thank you.

--

Best regards,

Vasily

Acronis Virtualization Program Manager