How to Remove a VM From Hyper-V Without Deleting the Configuration File?

I'm in the process of moving a number of virtual machines that are homed on shared storage (a file share, though shared cluster disk would work as well) to a new VM host with access to the same shared storage. The new host is a different build version (moving from Windows Server 2012 Beta to Windows Server 2012 RC - though this same process could be used with migrations of Windows Server 2008/2008 R2 to Windows Server 2012 as well), so I cannot migrate the machine with inbox tooling.

I need to remove the VM from management of the source Hyper-V host in order to import the VM to the new Hyper-V host. I want to retain the configuration file, so I can import the VM as it stands and not need to reconfigure it.

The VHD files are rather large and they are staying on the same file share, so I'd rather not duplicate them during the move process.

Solution 1:

It is called configuration only export / import. Did you check this article by Ben Armstrong, Hyper-V Program Manager? Similar solutions are also described here and here.