Summary

VMware vCenter may continue to be recognized as installed on an inventory device, even after vCenter has been removed from the computer.

Details

This behavior occurs because once vCenter has been removed from a computer, it is no longer possible to gather virtual inventory from the computer, which would show that vCenter is no longer installed, and so Flexera One ITAM/FlexNet Manager Suite never becomes aware of the removal.

When this problem occurs, rules that gather virtual inventory targeted at "known" VMware servers will continue to attempt to connect to and gather virtual inventory from the computer. This is likely to lead to such rules reporting failures. A common rule that does this is the built-in "Virtual Cluster Server Scan for IBM PVU" rule.

Workaround

Depending on the exact data in your system, manually deleting the inventory device record for the computer from the web UI will often remove the problematic details about vCenter. These records will be re-created based on the latest inventory data after fresh inventory is gathered and imported.