Delete Virtual Container Hosts

You delete virtual container hosts (VCHs) by using the vic-machine delete command.

The vic-machine delete includes one option in addition to the Common vic-machine Options, --force.

• You must specify the user name and optionally the password, either in the --target option or separately in the --user and --password options.
• If the VCH has a name other than the default name, virtual-container-host, you must specify the --name or --id option.
• If multiple compute resources exist in the datacenter, you must specify the --compute-resource or --id option.

• Specifying the --force option forces vic-machine delete to ignore warnings and continue with the deletion of a VCH. Any running container VMs and any volume stores associated with the VCH are deleted. Errors such as an incorrect compute resource still cause the deletion to fail.

  • If you do not specify --force and the VCH contains running container VMs, the deletion fails with a warning.
  • If you do not specify --force and the VCH has volume stores, the deletion of the VCH succeeds without deleting the volume stores. The list of volume stores appears in the vic-machine delete success message for reference and optional manual removal.

• If your vSphere environment uses untrusted, self-signed certificates, you must specify the thumbprint of the vCenter Server instance or ESXi host in the --thumbprint option. For information about how to obtain the certificate thumbprint, see Obtain vSphere Certificate Thumbprints.

  Use upper-case letters and colon delimitation in the thumbprint. Do not use space delimitation.

When you delete a VCH that uses TLS authentication with trusted Certificate Authority (CA) certificates, vic-machine delete does not delete the certificates or the certificate folder, even if you specify the --force option. Because vic-machine delete does not delete the certificates, you can delete VCHs and create new ones that reuse the same certificates. This is useful if you have already distributed the client certificates for VCHs that you need to recreate.

The vic-machine delete command does not modify the firewall on ESXi hosts. If you do not need to deploy or run further VCHs on the ESXi host or cluster after you have deleted VCHs, run vic-machine update firewall --deny to close port 2377 on the host or hosts.

Example

The following example includes the options required to remove a VCH from a simple vCenter Server environment.

$ vic-machine-operating_system delete
--target vcenter_server_username:password@vcenter_server_address
--thumbprint certificate_thumbprint
--name vch_name

If the delete operation fails with a message about container VMs that are powered on, run docker stop on the containers and run vic-machine delete again. Alternatively, run vic-machine delete with the --force option.

CAUTION Running vic-machine delete with the --force option removes all running container VMs that the VCH manages, as well as any associated volumes and volume stores. It is not recommended to use the --force option to remove running containers.

$ vic-machine-operating_system delete
--target vcenter_server_username:password@vcenter_server_address
--thumbprint certificate_thumbprint
--name vch_name
--force

If your vSphere environment uses untrusted, self-signed certificates, running vic-machine delete with the --force option allows you to omit the --thumbprint option.

$ vic-machine-operating_system delete
--target vcenter_server_username:password@vcenter_server_address
--name vch_name
--force

CAUTION: Using --force in this way exposes VCHs to the risk of man-in-the-middle attacks, in which attackers can learn vSphere credentials. Using --force also bypasses other checks, and can result in data loss.