Get a list of all System Center Virtual Machine Manager (SCVMM 2012 R2) Users via SQL

Ever need to send a notice to your System Center Virtual Machine Manager (SCVMM) users like “Upgrade to UR7 coming” but realized you never took the time to collect all of their names?

Here is some quick SQL that will give you the names of anyone who has actually used the platform:

select
distinct replace(SessionOwner, ‘contoso\’,”) as Username
from [tbl_TR_TaskTrail]
order by 1

As a added bonus if you replace contoso with your domain name it will strip that out making it ready to past into outlook for name resolution.

Enjoy!

-Eric

SCVMM 2012 | Force Remove vCenter Server

If you are reading this you likely took the plunge into Microsoft Virtual Machine Manager 2012, you added in your VMWARE vCenter, migrated some VM’s and then tried to jettison the old vCenter  that is no longer around.

If you did you likely got this error message:

VMM cannot complete the VMware operation on the <server> server because of the error: “Unable to connect to the remote server

image

You may have went for extra credit and run this powershell command without luck as well:

Get-VirtualizationManager -ComputerName <server> | Remove-VirtualizationManager

See unlike Remote-VMHost that has the –force switch you don’t have a –force switch with Remove-VirtualizationManager.

What is an admin to do??

Well if you are extremely irresponsible and want to blindly follow a guy with a blog who happened to find a way that at least looks like it worked then good Sir or Madam you are in the right place!!!

SQL Studio with Admin Rights

First you will need to run SQL Studio Manager with rights to the DB. If you have this then move on to the next section.

If like me you didn’t end up having permission to the default instance then run this nifty sysInternals tool PSEXEC:

PSEXEC –i –s cmd (make sure to run with admin rights)

If that works and you now have a cmd prompt go ahead and type whoami just for fun. you will see you are NT Authority\Local System!

Now go ahead and run the SQL Studio Manager from this command prompt. Given each version of SQL has this in a different location the easiest way would be to look at the properties of the start menu shortcut to find the full path to the executable.

The Query

Ah now once in SQL Studio with rights to the DB simple run this query to force remove the vCenter from your VMM instance.

HEY!!! SERIOUSLY I HAVE NO IDEA IF THIS IS SAFE!! USE AT YOUR OWN RISK.

DECLARE @computername varchar(255)
SET @computername = ‘<servername>’
DELETE FROM [tbl_ADHC_AgentServerRelation] WHERE AgentServerID = (select top 1 AgentServerID from tbl_ADHC_AgentServer where Computername = @computername)
DELETE FROM [tbl_ADHC_AgentServer] WHERE AgentServerID = (select top 1 AgentServerID from tbl_ADHC_AgentServer where Computername = @computername)
DELETE FROM [tbl_ADHC_Host] WHERE [HostID] = (select top 1 HostID from tbl_ADHC_Host where ComputerName = @computername)

Now, if I you know a better way please leave a comment.

If this helped you, please leave a comment. Love knowing my time wasn’t wasted.

If you are Microsoft and you feel I am leading people off a cliff, PLEASE PLEASE leave me a comment.

In any event, hope it helps and enjoy!

-Eric