VMM Duplicate VMs

VMM may discover VMs that already exist in the environment and add then as a new VM. You will end up with two different VMs listed with the same name.

To confirm that this is the case run the following command in VMM Powershell.

get-vm “Duplicate-VM-Name” | FL NAME,ID,biosguid,location

If you have duplicate machines then everything except the ID, which is VMM assigned, will match as shown below

Name : Duplicate-VM-Name
ID : 42635679-94fb-4149-ad26-66041a8c96eb
BiosGuid : 5cf412b5-3398-4c5a-951f-3e22c7f97d1a
Location : C:\ClusterStorage\volume1

Name : Duplicate-VM-Name
ID : 8c675f1e-6626-4805-b365-f9b6be3d6c7f
BiosGuid : 5cf412b5-3398-4c5a-951f-3e22c7f97d1a
Location : C:\ClusterStorage\volume1

Both of these VMs refer to the same REAL VM so if you delete one then the second VM will go into a missing state.

If you use powershell using the -force parameter the behaviour changes. This will remove the VM from the VMM database but will not touch the VM. You can use the following powershell command to do this.

get-vm “Duplicate-VM-Name” | WHERE ID -eq “8c675f1e-6626-4805-b365-f9b6be3d6c7f” | remove-vm -force

You will now just have a single VM again.