How do I delete an Azure storage account containing a leased blob?

Question

I was playing with Windows Azure durable virtual machines. In the end, I deleted the virtual machine (successfully) and tried to delete the associated storage account.

Answer 1

The key to the solution is the message that the container has an active disk artifact and the advice to remove it from the repository.

The procedure to remove the disk image from the blob repository is:

• Go to the Windows Azure Management Portal.
• Click on Virtual Machines.
• Click on Disks.
• Click on the disk.
• Click on Delete Disk.

After that, the storage account can be deleted.

Notes:

• This applies even if you've already deleted all of your Virtual Machines and it shows 0; there still will be artifacts under the disks tab.
• Disks are detached from a deleted VM asynchronously, it may take a few minutes after the VM is deleted for this field to clear up.

See also: Unable to delete VHD, “There is currently a lease on the blob…”

Answer 2

As F.M. has already stated; there is a scenario where when deleting a VM the disk still shows as attached to the VM even though the VM has been deleted.

For me this happened because I had a set a spending limit. When the spending limit is hit, your services are disabled. Any VPN gateways you have created and VMs will be deleted. Then to top it off the disks attached to the deleted VMs still think they are attached :(

I have found this blog that explains the issue and shows how to use powershell to resolve.

Hope this helps other users.

Answer 3

You can use Iaas Management Studio : break the lease, delete the blob, then remove the orphaned image.

Answer 4

For those who rely on GUI to manage Azure and have no idea to use PowerShell or do the other answers, you can now delete the stuck storage account by checking "Delete unattached images" when trying to delete the storage.

It will automatically delete the storage without much hassle.