Remove your VMware vCenter environment from Azure Arc

In this article, you learn how to cleanly remove your VMware vCenter environment from Azure Arc-enabled VMware vSphere. For VMware vSphere environments that you no longer want to manage by using Azure Arc-enabled VMware vSphere, follow the steps in this article to:

Remove guest management from VMware virtual machines
Remove your VMware vCenter environment from Azure Arc
Remove Arc resource bridge related items in your vCenter

1. Remove guest management from VMware virtual machines

To prevent continued billing of Azure management services after you remove the vSphere environment from Azure Arc, first cleanly remove guest management from all Arc-enabled VMware vSphere virtual machines where it was enabled. When you enable guest management on Arc-enabled VMware vSphere virtual machines, you install the Arc connected machine agent on them.

Once you enable guest management, you can install VM extensions on the virtual machines and use Azure management services like the Log Analytics on them. To cleanly remove guest management, follow the steps in this section to remove any VM extensions from the virtual machine, disconnect the agent, and uninstall the software from your virtual machine. It's important to complete each of the three steps to fully remove all related software components from your virtual machines.

Step 1: Remove VM extensions

If you deployed Azure VM extensions to an Azure Arc-enabled VMware vSphere VM, uninstall the extensions before disconnecting the agent or uninstalling the software. Uninstalling the Azure Connected Machine agent doesn't automatically remove extensions, and they aren't recognized if you later connect the VM to Azure Arc again. Use the following steps to uninstall extensions:

Go to Azure Arc center in Azure portal
Select VMware vCenters.
Search and select the vCenter you want to remove from Azure Arc.
Select Virtual machines under vCenter inventory.
Search and select the virtual machine where you enabled Guest Management.
Select Extensions.
Select the extensions and select Uninstall.

Step 2: Disconnect the agent from Azure Arc

When you disconnect the agent, it clears the local state of the agent and removes agent information from Azure systems. To disconnect the agent, sign in and run the following command as an administrator or root account on the virtual machine.

    azcmagent disconnect --force-local-only

Step 3: Uninstall the agent

For Windows virtual machines

To uninstall the Windows agent from the machine, complete the following steps:

Sign in to the computer by using an account that has administrator permissions.
In Control Panel, select Programs and Features.
In Programs and Features, select Azure Connected Machine Agent, select Uninstall, and then select Yes.
Delete the C:\Program Files\AzureConnectedMachineAgent folder.

For Linux virtual machines

To uninstall the Linux agent, use a command that depends on the Linux operating system. You must have root access permissions or your account must have elevated rights by using sudo.

For Ubuntu, run the following command:
```
sudo apt purge azcmagent
```
For RHEL and Oracle Linux, run the following command:
```
sudo yum remove azcmagent
```
For SLES, run the following command:
```
sudo zypper remove azcmagent
```

2. Remove your VMware vCenter environment from Azure Arc

You can remove your VMware vSphere resources from Azure Arc by using either the deboarding script or manual steps.

Remove VMware vSphere resources from Azure Arc by using deboarding script

Download the deboarding script to clean up all the Arc-enabled VMware resources. The script removes all the Azure resources, including vCenter, custom location, virtual machines, virtual templates, hosts, clusters, resource pools, datastores, virtual networks, Azure Resource Manager (ARM) resource of Appliance, and the appliance VM running on vCenter.

Run the script

To run the deboarding script, follow these steps:

Windows

Open a PowerShell window as an Administrator and go to the folder where you downloaded the PowerShell script.

Note

On Windows workstations, you must run the script in a PowerShell window and not in PowerShell Integrated Script Editor (ISE). PowerShell ISE doesn't display the input prompts from Azure CLI commands. If you run the script on PowerShell ISE, it can appear as though the script is stuck while it's waiting for input.
Run the following command to allow the script to run because it's an unsigned script. (If you close the session before you complete all the steps, run this command again for the new session.)
```
Set-ExecutionPolicy -Scope Process -ExecutionPolicy Bypass
```
Run the script.
```
./arcvmware-deboard.ps1
```

Inputs for the script

vCenterId: The Azure resource ID of the VMware vCenter resource.
For example: /subscriptions/aaaa0a0a-bb1b-cc2c-dd3d-eeeeee4e4e4e/resourceGroups/Synthetics/providers/Microsoft.ConnectedVMwarevSphere/VCenters/vcenterresource
AVSId: The Azure resource ID of the AVS instance. You must specify either vCenterId or AVSId.
ApplianceConfigFilePath (optional): Path to kubeconfig, output from deploy command. Providing applianceconfigfilepath also deletes the appliance VM running on the vCenter.
Force: Using the Force flag deletes all the Azure resources without reaching resource bridge. Use this option if resource bridge VM isn't in running state.

Remove VMware vSphere resources from Azure manually

If you aren't using the deboarding script, follow these steps to remove the VMware vSphere resources manually:

Note

When you enable VMware vSphere resources in Azure, you create an Azure resource that represents them. Before you can delete the vCenter resource in Azure, you must delete all the Azure resources that represent your related vSphere resources.

Go to Azure Arc center in Azure portal
Select VMware vCenters.
Search and select the vCenter you want to remove from Azure Arc.
Select Virtual machines under vCenter inventory.
Select all the VMs that have Virtual hardware management value as Enabled.
Select Remove from Azure.

This action only removes these resource representations from Azure. The resources continue to remain in your vCenter.
Repeat steps 4, 5, and 6 for Clouds, VM networks, and VM templates by performing Remove from Azure operation for resources with Azure Enabled value as Yes.
Once the deletion is complete, select Overview.
Note the Custom location and the Azure Arc Resource bridge resource in the Essentials section.
Select Remove from Azure to remove the vCenter resource from Azure.
Go to the Custom location resource and select Delete.
Go to the Azure Arc Resource bridge resource and select Delete.

At this point, you remove all your Arc-enabled VMware vSphere resources from Azure.

During onboarding, to create a connection between your VMware vCenter and Azure, you deploy an Azure Arc resource bridge in your VMware vSphere environment. As the last step, you must delete the resource bridge VM and the VM template that you created during the onboarding process.

You can find both the virtual machine and the template on the resource pool, cluster, or host that you provided during Azure Arc-enabled VMware vSphere onboarding.

Next steps

Connect the vCenter to Azure Arc again.

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Last updated on 2026-02-11