Instant Clone Error (missing) Status

I received this status after some Instant Clone VMs got deleted from vCenter and not through Horizon. Since I haven’t dealt with too many Instant Clone errors I decided to first try rebooting the environment. I was hoping they were simpler to recover from than linked-clones have been. Following the proper shutdown procedure of all the View Connection servers and rebooting vCenter these errors persisted. I also tried removing and recovering the VMs just to see what would happen…nothing happened. One final test was to enable provisioning again and see if it attempted to rebuild the pool, which it did not. I was a little disappointed with no self-recovery or clean up. These VMs don’t exist so it’s strange you can’t just delete the objects from Horizon and move on with our day. Hopefully we see this change in the future.

My solution was to delete these VMs from the ADAM database on the connection server. The same process used to resolve similar errors with linked-clone VMs.

Problem

As you can see above the full error does state that the VM has already been deleted. “Client received SOAP Fault from server: The object has already been deleted or has not been completely created Please see the server log to find more detail regarding exact cause of the failure.

Solution

For reference here are two KBs that discuss this process. Interestingly they don’t reference Instant Clones, so I can’t guarantee that this is supported. I haven’t seen any issues with it so far. If you have more info please share!

Resolving Linked Clone failures: KB 2015112

Connecting to View ADAM Database: KB 2012377

First log into one of the Horizon Connection servers. Connect to the ADAM database by either navigating to Start > Administrative Tools > ADSI Edit or like I did, search for ADSI Edit.

From the editor console right-click ADSI Edit and select Connect to.

Enter the following information exactly as shown in the screenshot.

Click OK.

Back in the ADSI Edit expand View ADAM Database [localhost:389]

To create a query right-click the View ADAM Database and select New > Query.

Next Give the query a name. I called mine VMSearch. Then click Browse under Root of Search.

Select Servers and click OK.

In the Query String field enter the following string. Modify the VirtualMachineName for whatever VM you are looking for. If you want to search for multiple VMs with similar names simply use the * for a wildcard. In my example I am searching for multiple VMs named VDIIC2-1 through VDIIC2-5.

General string: (&(objectClass=pae-VM)(pae-displayname=VirtualMachineName))

My example string: (&(objectClass=pae-VM)(pae-displayname=VDIIC2-*))

Click OK.

 

Now you should see your Query listed under the View ADAM Database. Clock on it.

To validate that these are in fact the VMs you want to delete it’s best to check the properties. Right-click on an object and click Properties.

You should see the VM name that you are looking for.

If you’re ready to delete the object go back to the query and right-click on the object selecting Delete.

If you’re sure, go ahead and click Yes.

Back in Horizon Administrator you should now see the object you just deleted missing from the Inventory of the pool. Keep in mind this assumes the object does not exist in vCenter.

VDIIC2-1 is gone…finally.

Since provisioning was enabled on the pool it actually rebuilt the VM right away, which was nice.

Now to delete the rest

So, there you go, the linked clone cleanup method works for Instant Clones. I hope this helps and if you have any questions or info to add please leave a comment. I’m trying to be better about checking the comments!