“Some migration network settings cannot be modified or removed because these migration network settings are in use by a cluster” in Hyper-V manager, Hyper-V Settings after a node is non-cleanly evicted from a failed cluster

System Requirements:

  • Windows Server 2008, 2008 R2, 2012, 2012 R2, 2016
  • Hyper-V

The Problem:

After a total cluster failure occurs, or a node is removed from a cluster before it has been cleanly removed. When attempting to locally manage the host as a stand-alone Hyper-V server, you are unable to edit the live migration settings in Hyper-V Settings via Hyper-V Manager with the error

“Some migration network settings cannot be modified or removed because these migration network settings are in use by a cluster”

The IP/Subnet addresses shown on the form will be greyed out and you will be unable to edit the live migration network settings.

Hyper-V Settings: Unable to edit Live Migration Networks

More Info

While you should ensure that you have performed a cluster clean-up on the host

Server 2012 +:
Clear-ClusterNode -Force -CleanupA

Server 2008/R2:
cluster node <hostname> /forcecleanup

This will not solve the live migration settings issue highlighted above.

The Fix

  1. Close Hyper-V Manager on the management workstation
  2. On the hypervisor experiencing these symptoms (not necessarily the management console). Navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Virtualization\Migration\NetworkSettings
  3. Underneath this key there will be a key for each entry shown on the Live Migration Settings screen. The keys will be named Network# e.g. Network0, Network1, Network2 and so on.
  4. Go through each of these Network# keys and locate the ‘Tags’ REG_MULTI_SZ. This will have a value of “Microsoft:ClusterManaged”
    Registry Screenshot: Error
  5. Change the data value to “Microsoft:UserManaged”
    Registry Settings: Fixed
  6. Complete the process for each Network# sub-key
  7. Restart Hyper-V Manager

You will now be able to add, edit and delete the live migration settings.