Learning PowerCLI - Second Edition

Removing virtual machines

In the lifecycle of a virtual machine, there comes a time when you may want to remove it. This may be because the application running on the virtual machine is not in use anymore, or because the operating system running on the virtual machine is obsolete and you have moved the application to a new server. To remove a virtual machine, you can use the Remove-VM cmdlet, which has the following syntax:

Remove-VM [-DeletePermanently] [-RunAsync] [-VM] <VirtualMachine[]>
    [-Server <VIServer[]>] [-WhatIf] [-Confirm] [<CommonParameters>]

If you use the -DeletePermanently parameter, the virtual machine will be removed from your vSphere inventory and the datastores. If you omit the -DeletePermanently parameter, the virtual machine ...