Embodiments of the present invention provide a method, computer program product, and computer system for reclaiming resources during virtual machine decommission. The method includes determining a virtual machine (VM) resource utilization and a cluster utilization. If the VM resource utilization is less than a first predetermined threshold and the cluster utilization is greater than a second predetermined threshold, the method then determines whether an active timer exists. If the active timer exists and has expired, then dynamic decommission of the VM is triggered.