Delete a VM

_{Updated May 8, 2026} Deleting a VM removes it from your account and stops billing. The dashboard walks you through a two-step confirmation that lets you decide what to do with the VM’s attached volumes and VPCs at the same time. On a subscription, the unused days and hours of the current term are credited back to your account balance.

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Before you delete — keep a recovery option

Two ways to keep a path back: If you only care about specific files (not the whole VM), back them up to Object Storage or off-platform before deleting.

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Three ways to start

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a. VM detail page → Destroy tab

Open the VM detail page, click the Destroy tab (last tab in the secondary nav). Click the red Destroy VM button to start the two-step confirmation.

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b. Instance list → row Actions menu → Destroy

Open the row’s ⋮ menu and pick Destroy (in red, at the bottom). This redirects you to the Destroy tab on the VM detail page — same confirmation flow as path a.

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c. Bulk — multiple VMs at once

In the Instances list, tick the checkbox on multiple VM rows. The bulk toolbar at the top shows Delete Selected. Bulk delete uses the same two-step confirmation described below — the volume / VPC handling choices you make apply to every VM in the selection.

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Step 1 — Type the VM name to confirm

A “Destroy VM” dialog opens. Type the VM’s exact name to enable the Confirm button. Two things on this screen:

• Type the VM name to confirm — copy or type the name exactly. Prevents accidental deletes.
• Subscription Billing notice — reminder that your current subscription will be cancelled and the remaining days will return to your account balance (not your card).

Click Confirm to advance to step 2.

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Step 2 — Final Confirmation: volumes and VPCs

The “Final Confirmation” dialog asks you to decide what happens to attached volumes and attached VPCs along with the VM. This is the part most users miss the first time — the choices you make here are made together with the VM destroy, in one operation.

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Attached volumes

If the VM has attached volumes, you choose what happens to each one: A volume can only be attached to one VM at a time, so detaching here makes it available to attach to a different VM later (data preserved). Deleting is the equivalent of running Delete a volume immediately after the VM destroy — same one-way destruction. If the VM has no attached volumes, this section shows “No attached volumes” and there’s nothing to choose.

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Attached VPCs

The dialog lists every VPC the VM is currently in. You choose: Critical safety rule — even if you select Delete VPCs, the platform preserves any VPC that still has another VM attached. Only VPCs with no remaining VMs are actually deleted. This protects shared VPCs from accidental deletion when you’re tearing down one of several VMs that share the same network. The “recommended” label assumes the VPC was created for this single VM. If you have a multi-VM stack on the same VPC, leaving Keep VPCs selected is the safer choice — though as noted, the platform also won’t let you accidentally delete a still-in-use VPC.

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Confirm

Click the red Destroy VM button. The VM and the elements you selected are removed; the VPC safety rule applies as described.

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What happens on delete

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Bulk delete — same two-step flow

When you select multiple VMs and click Delete Selected, the same two-step dialog runs once. The choices you make (keep/delete volumes, keep/delete VPCs) apply to every selected VM:

• “Delete VPCs” → applies to every selected VM’s VPCs, with the same per-VPC safety rule (preserved if a non-selected VM still uses it).
• “Detach volumes” → every attached volume across the selection is detached (kept).
• “Delete volumes” → every attached volume across the selection is destroyed.

If your selection mixes VMs that should be torn down completely with VMs that share a VPC with others outside the selection, the safety rule still protects the still-in-use VPCs even with Delete VPCs selected — but for clarity, do the destructive batch first and the surgical ones separately.

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Cleanup after delete

If you opted to keep volumes, VPCs, or Public IPs, those keep billing until you remove them:

• Volumes — see Delete a volume.
• Public IPs — release them if not reused on another VM.
• Backups — survive per their retention. Keep one if you might want support to restore the VM later; otherwise delete from the Backups tab to stop the storage meter.
• Backup schedules — orphaned schedules pointing at the destroyed VM should be removed from Compute Resources → Backups → Scheduled Backups.

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Subscription credit on delete

When the VM is on a subscription term (Monthly, Yearly, 2-Year), deleting in the middle of the term credits the unused days and hours back to your account balance. The credit is immediate and can fund another VM, top up a different subscription, or sit until the next renewal cycle. It is not refunded to your card. If the VM was running on PAYG, billing simply stops at the minute of deletion.

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Restore a deleted VM

You can’t undelete from the dashboard. To get back to a working VM:

1. From a backup — contact support@rafftechnologies.com with the backup name or ID. Support can spin up a new VM from the backup with the same disk contents and installed software.
2. From an image — if you saved the VM’s disk as an image before deleting, create a new VM and pick the image under OS template → Marketplace / Custom images.
3. From scratch — if you have neither, start over with Create a VM.

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Next steps