Proxmox KVM virtual machine: Cannot delete due to missing storage

Today we encountered a situation where a Proxmox system’s KVM virtual machine refused to delete after the storage volume that it’s virtual HDD resided on was lost; trying to delete the KVM from the web GUI resulted in the following error:

 

TASK ERROR: storage ‘proxmoxHDD’ does not exists

 

Attempting to delete it from the command line using:

 

qm destroy [VM ID]

 

…resulted in:

 

storage ‘proxmoxHDD’ does not exists

 

Fortunately, there’s a way around this. The KVM config files live in:

 

/etc/pve/qemu-server

 

Move or erase the [VM ID].conf file and when you refresh your web GUI the VM should be gone.