Uninstall NetApp VSC from VMware vCenter

This article covers the steps to uninstall NetApp VSC (Virtual Storage Controller). Screenshots are based on the NetApp VSC 7.2 which does not fully support VMware 6.7 environments. Actually find out this late when the virtual appliance was already installed. As of last week of January 2019 NetApp also released version 7.2.1 which adds compatibility with the latest versions of VMware. So this is an opportunity to learn and revisit the steps on how to uninstall NetApp VSC when the plugins are not working as expected or when in-place upgrades might fail for some reason.

The entire process is pretty simple. It consists in detecting the installed plugin extensions using the vCenter object browser and disable them. After that would be a matter of deleting these ones from the VCSA appliance and restart either the VMware vSphere Client service or the VCSA appliance itself. In this case the latter proved to be the working method to update the information.

Next part of the article covers the process in more details.

How to uninstall NetApp VSC

In the case the uninstall NetApp VSC is required this action can be easily accomplished with 3 simple steps:

• Disable the Virtual Storage Console plugin from the VMware vCenter environment
• Use the VMware VCSA MOB (Managed Object Reference) tool to disable the NetApp plugin extensions
• Delete the NetApp Plugin extensions from the VCSA appliance and restart the VMware Web Client service

Before proceeding it is important and make sure no virtual machines sitting on the storage systems operated by the NetApp VSC are running. or at least should be evacuated to a different VMware datastore.

Step 1. Unfortunately version 7.2 does not support VMware 6.7. This shows an error with warning when trying to access the Virtual Storage Console. Also it is not possible to add any storage system.

Next step is to disable the NetApp VSC client plugin from the vCenter Web Client.

A message will appear and it is just a matter of confirming to proceed.

Step 2. Browsing the VMware VCSA MOB at “https://VCSA-Address/MOB”  >  content will show all the available services and categories for the enabled extensions.

From here the next steps would be to click on “ExtensionManager”

This view now shows the content of the enabled extensions. A more… button gives a full list of the extensions available.

Alternatively it is possible to use directly the “UnregisterExtension” method to invoke and unregister the NetApp extensions. In particular the following should be invoked and unregistered:

• com.netapp.nvpf
• com.netapp.nvpf.webclient
• com.netapp.vasa.vvol.webclient (applies if virtual volumes have been configured)

Step 3. In this step now it is just a matter of removing the Netapp plugin extensions form the VCSA appliance and restart the Web Client or the appliance itself. To accomplish this the SSH access is required and can be enabled from the Appliance Management > Access interface.

When accessing the VCSA appliance file system, the first step would be to enter in the “shell” mode to run commands

At this point it is a matter to change directory with the following command:

“cd /etc/vmware/vsphere-client/vc-packages/vsphere-client-serenity“.

In the case of VCSA based on a VMware 6.7 the command to stop the VMware vSphere Client service would be:

“service-control –stop vsphere-client”

By running a list command it will show in this directory all the plugin extension files. From here it is possible to remove all NetApp file with a single command:

“rm -rf com.netapp.*”

A new list command to double check the outcome and if successful it would be a case of restarting the VMware vSphere client with:

“service-control –start vsphere-client“.

In my case the simple service restart did not sort any effect until the VCSA appliance was fully restarted to clear and update the Client Plugins information page on the VCSA. At this point everything is ready to install the latest version of the NetApp VSC compatible with the desired version of VMware.