How to Delete Volume Attached to Stale VM?

Problem

A Persistent Storage volume cannot be deleted because it is still marked as attached to a VM, but:

• The VM is deleted / missing / stale
• The attachment is orphaned
• Standard delete fails with errors like:

$ openstack volume delete <VOLUME_UUID>
Failed to delete volume with name or ID '[VOLUME_UUID]': 
Invalid volume: Volume is in status 'in-use', expected one of ('available', 'error', 'error_restoring', 'error_extending', 'error_managing'). 
(HTTP 400) (Request-ID: [REQ_ID])

Environment

• Private Cloud Director Virtualization - v2025.4 and Higher
• Self-Hosted Private Cloud Director Virtualization - v2025.4 and Higher
• Component: Storage Service

Cause

This usually happens due to:

• Failed VM deletion
• Incomplete detach workflow
• Messaging issues (RabbitMQ / Persistent Storage / Compute Service sync gap)
• DB state inconsistency between Persistent Storage and Compute Service

Diagnostics

• Step 1: Identify the Volume

  $ openstack volume show <VOLUME_ID>

  • Check:

    status -> likely in-use attachments -> contains stale server UUID
• Step 2: Verify VM Existence

  $ openstack server show <VM_ID>

  • Check:

    Not found -> stale attachment confirmed

Resolution

1. Force the volume to an available state for Persistent Storage to ignore the stale VM

   $ openstack volume set --state available <VOLUME_UUID>

2. Delete the stale attachment:

   $ openstack volume attachment delete <ATTACHMENT_UUID>

3. Delete the volume:

   $ openstack volume delete <VOLUME_UUID> --force

Validation

• The volume is deleted successfully

$ openstack volume show <VOLUME_ID>
No volume with a name or ID of '[VOLUME_ID]' exists.

Below step is applicable for Self-Hosted Private Cloud Director Users who can access the persistent storage and compute service databases.

• No stale entries present in the following tables:

  • volume_attachment
  • nova.block_device_mapping