title: Azure Service Fabric - Deleting old versions of applications to reclaim disk space
body: <p>We are running out of space on our D:\Temporary Storage drive on our Service Fabric Cluster VM's (5 nodes).  I have conversed back and forth with MS support about what is safe to delete from this drive and the answers I'm getting are ambiguous at best.</p>
  
  <p>I've noted that we have many older versions of our applications and services on the VM's that we don't need anymore.  Getting rid of these will definitely help free up space.  I've asked MS support if it's safe to delete the old versions of the applications and they said yes, but then directed me to these links:</p>
  
  <p><a href="https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/service-fabric/service-fabric-deploy-remove-applications#remove-an-application-package-from-the-image-store" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/service-fabric/service-fabric-deploy-remove-applications#remove-an-application-package-from-the-image-store</a></p>
  
  <p><a href="https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/service-fabric/service-fabric-deploy-remove-applications#remove-an-application" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/service-fabric/service-fabric-deploy-remove-applications#remove-an-application</a></p>
  
  <p><a href="https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/service-fabric/service-fabric-deploy-remove-applications#unregister-an-application-type" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/service-fabric/service-fabric-deploy-remove-applications#unregister-an-application-type</a></p>
  
  <p>So the three sections we have are:</p>
  
  <ol>
  <li>Remove an application package from the image store</li>
  <li>Remove an application</li>
  <li>Unregister an application type</li>
  </ol>
  
  <p>These all deal with PowerShell scripts that need to be run, which I am very novice with.  I have direct RDP access to the VM's and have the ability to simply delete the files via Windows File Explorer.  Is it ok to do it this way, or do I need to go the Powershell route for deletion and Unregistering the application?  At least for #1, removing the application package from the image store, there shouldn't be any issue with me just deleting <em>that</em> from Windows File Explorer in the VM's, correct?  </p>
  
  <p>EDIT: this is not a duplicate of <a href="https://stackoverflow.com/questions/52839459/run-out-of-storage-on-service-fabric-scale-set">Run out of storage on Service Fabric scale set</a> :
  I am asking about manually clearing space on the SFC VM's - the above thread is talking about setting up your application deployment to auto-delete old versions of applications.  These are not duplicates.</p>