vCD Expired VM Cleanup Fails

While renewing a vApp from Expired Items in an Organization I decided to cleanup a couple vApps which expired over 4 months ago. I deleted them and didn’t think much of them until I was working in vCenter an hour later.  I noticed recurring tasks trying to power off the VM’s that belonged to these vApps.

Looking at the VM’s they were suspended.  For this to happen the owners ignored the running lease time at which time the VM’s were suspended and the vApps stopped.  When the storage lease time expired the vApp went to Expired Items but the VM was still suspended.

Now that I deleted the vApp the process to remove it from vCenter must only check if it is not powered on.   Since it is suspended the power off task fails and vCD keeps trying this process. All I had to do to correct this was power on the VM and in a couple minutes vCD powered it off and cleaned everything up.

I was thinking I could write a PowerCLI script or vCO workflow to check for this and fix the VM’s.  You wouldn’t want to fix all “Suspended” VM’s as a user might want to suspend them on their own.