Keep this short.
I had to update a ESXi host locally as it’s mgmt connection would drop with all VMs having to go down on it. As it’s a single host with virtualized network components.
On one of the VMs this was an opportunity to update it since it needed to be shutdown temperately anyway. I took a snapshot of the VM, updated it, validated updates were fine, removed the snapshot. Then proceeded to update the host:
vim-cmd hostsvc/Maintenance_mode_enter
esxcli software vib update -d "/path/to/file.zip"
vim-cmd hostsvc/Maintenance_mode_exit reboot
Nothing special here. However once the host came back up and I was able to access it via vCenter, one of the VM’s was shown as “disconnected” I’ve seen this with ESXi hosts before, but not particularly with a VM.
Oddly enough there’s only one datastore on the host and all other VMs are fine, and checking the datastore, all files are where they should be.
I figured maybe remove the VM from inventory and just re-add it via the vmx file, however the option was greyed out.
It turned out there was apparently still a snapshot left on the VM (noticed via delta files existing within the VMs folder path).
Removing all the snapshots resolved the issue. Turns out the VM was also running, but didn’t show the green play icon, thus I wasn’t aware of it’s powered on state. Which also explains the greyed out context menu for removing from inventory.
Hope this helps someone.