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How to delete old VM from Hyper-V Cluster

Hyper-V cluster is a very common business network uses, which allows system admin to do system updates, without having any downtime. There are times when VM (Virtual Machine) are created for a test or just got upgraded and left to be deleted later on. Cleaning up old VM will free up the storage space. In this post I will have steps on deleting VM from Hyper-V cluster, before deleting, check the location of the VM because deleting from the Cluster server, will not free up the storage, you will need to delete it manually. You can see the location of the VM by going to settings of the VM and select the Disk, it will display full path where your VM disk is stored.

Open Failover Cluster Manager, then click on Roles, you should see list of VM’s, select the one you want to delete, then right on it and select Remove.

You will get confirmation message, make sure it’s the correct VM, then click Yes, The VM will be removed from the Cluster.

Then go to Hyper-V host where VM was running from, so you can remove from list

Confirmation are you sure you want to delete, if it’s correct VM you are deleting click Delete.

Now the VM is deleted from Cluster and remove from Hyper-V host, it’s time to delete the VM disk, by going to the location you looked at before you deleted the VM. That should give you back the storage space. That’s it, you get an error check the windows log or application log, it will give you more info.


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How to restore deleted VM from Cluster

By mistaken you have deleted good VM and if you still have the VM disk, you can still bring it back online. As long as VM disk is not deleted from the Hyper-V it would be a very easy restore. Option 1 if you have not deleted VM from Hyper-V if you have deleted from Hyper-V follow option 2 after selecting VM from the Cluster Role.

Option 1

Open Failover Cluster Manager

Right click on the Roles>choose Configure Role …


Then you may get this default message: click next

Select the Virtual Machine, then click Next

Then you will see your deleted VM here: select it and click Next

If you don’t see the VM go to Option 2

Confirmation, Click Next

If everything goes well you should see success message with summary, if you want to see details click on View Report or click Finish.

Options 2

If you deleted VM and removed the Hyper-V host then you not see here, then you will need to add VM as new and use the same Disk

Adding new VM to Cluster with existing disk

Select the Cluster node (Hyper-V host), then click ok

Then you may see the New Virtual Machine Wizard, click Next

Then the VM to whatever you like, then click Next

Select the Generation of the VM:

Then set Memory and click Next

Select networking from list, then click Next

At this screen you will select the use an existing virtual hard disk, then click Next

You should see the Summary of new VM, if everything is good, click Finish

If everything goes well, you should see the Success message, click View Report for details or click Finish

That’s it, you should see your recovered VM back in the Cluster