During the test of the Cisco Nexus 1000V the customer deleted the VSM first without removing the DVS using commands from within the VSM, ending up with an orphaned DVS. One can directly delete the DVS from the DB, but there are bunch of rows in multiple tables that need to be deleted. This is risky and may render DB in some inconsistent state if an error is made while deleting any rows. Luckily there is a more elegant way to remove an orphaned DVS without hacking and possibly breaking the vCenter DB.
A little background first:
When installing the Cisco Nexus 1000V VSM, the VSM uses an extension-key for identification. During the configuration process the VSM spawns a DVS and will configure it with the same extension-key. Due to the matching extension keys (extension session) the VSM owns the DVS essentially.
And only the VSM with the same extension-key as the DVS can delete the DVS.
So to be able to delete a DVS, a VSM must exist registered with the same extension key.
If you deleted the VSM and are stuck with an orphaned DVS, the first thing to do is to install and configure a new VSM. Use a different switch name than the first (deleted) VSM. The new VSM will spawn a new DVS matching the switch name configured within the VSM.
The first step is to remove the new spawned DVS and do this the proper way using commands from within the VSM virtual machine.
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