How to disassociate an ESXi host from vCenter when vCenter is not available

You may need to disassociate an ESXi host from vCenter in a situation where your vCenter Server is not available (eg. to perform an Emergency Restore of a VM directly to an ESXi host).

If you use vSphere 5.0 or above just follow these steps:

  • connect directly to your ESXi host using the vSphere Client
  • select the ESXi host in the left inventory panel
  • change to the “Summary” tab
  • scroll down till you see the “Host Management” section

In the “Host Management” section you have two possibilities:

Host-Management

  1. Reconnect vSphere Client to this vCenter Server…
  2. Disassociate host from vCenter Server…

Choose number two: “Disassociate host from vCenter Server…” – Done!

4 Comments

  1. James

    Hi there

    In my version of vCenter I also had to right click on the host (from inventory) and select All vCenter Actions > Remove from Inventory). I did this after the steps you outline above and it’s worked well.

    Thanks for the article.

  2. Daniel

    Hi thanks, very usefull

  3. Kallu

    Thanks this post help me.

  4. Anil

    is there any command line available on ESXi server to disassociate host from vCenter ?

Leave a Comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *