The placeholder virtual machine on the recovery site still exists after you delete the protection group and recovery plan

When you delete the recovery plan and protection group from the VMware Live Site Recovery inventory, the placeholder VM might still be visible on the recovery site.

Problem

When you delete the recovery plan and protection group from the VMware Live Site Recovery inventory, the placeholder VM is still visible on the recovery site. An error occurs when you try to create a new protection group with the same datastore and virtual machine. When you try to manually delete the placeholder virtual machine from the vCenter Server inventory, an error occurs. VMware Live Site Recovery marks the virtual machine as orphaned.

Solution

Delete the placeholder virtual machine and remove the orphaned virtual machine, then create the protection group with the same virtual machine.