Did you find yourself with a VMwareViewComposerReplicaFolder object in your Inventory after playing around with Omnissa or VMware Horizon, and no way to delete it because you'd already uninstalled all the Horizon bits?
That's where I found myself this week, and I kept finding posts about using "sviconfig" —one of the management tools for Horizon— but nothing about how to do it without it.
Luckily, I found a couple of different posts (linked below in the References section) that allowed me to accomplish the task.
It's a 3-step process:
- Find the "Managed Object ID" for the folder
- Use the vCenter MOB to enable deletion
- Use vCenter to remove the folder from inventory
Step 1: Find the MOB ID
- Open a supported browser to the MOB: https://<vcenter fqdn>/mob/
- After logging in, click content in the Properties section
- Find and click on the group-d1 (Datacenter) link. It's in the VALUE column for the row with "rootFolder" in the NAME column.
- In the "childEntity" row, there will be a listing of the datacenter(s) in inventory, and links to those objects. Click on the one for the datacenter that holds the folder.
- At the Datacenter object, there will be several folder types to choose from. The folder we're trying to get rid of is a VM folder, so select the link to the VM folders.
- Again, in the "childEntity" row, there will be a handful of folders (with links) enumerated. If you don't see the VMwareViewComposerReplicaFolder entry, click more... until you do. If your folder is nested under other folders, keep clicking through child folders until you get to the parent folder that holds it. You're mirroring the tree that's displayed in vCenter "VMs and Templates"
- The text in the link (e.g., group-v13561) is the MOB ID for the folder. Make a note.
Step 2: Enable deletion
- Open a supported browser to the MOB: https://<vcenter fqdn>/mob/
If you wish, you can duplicate the tab used above, or just remove the parameters in the current window. - Open the AuthorizationManager section of the MOB with a specific URL:
https://<vcenter fqdn>/mob/?moid=AuthorizationManager&methods=enableMethods
note: you cannot navigate to this URL through the UI. You can get to the AuthorizationManager, but enableMethods is not a publicly-available method! - In the "entity" field, replace "MOID" in the XML string with the MOB ID you found in Step 1
- <entity type="MethodName" xsi:type="string">vim.ManagedEntity.destroy</entity>
- <entity type="MethodName" xsi:type="string">vim.Folder.unregisterAndDestroy</entity>
- In the "method" field, paste the following:
- Click "Invoke Method"
Step 3: Delete the folder
At this point, the folder should be removable from inventory; it was for me.
