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Updated May 8, 2026 Factory Reset wipes the VM’s OS disk and reinstalls the same OS template fresh. Everything outside the OS disk — attached volumes, backups, volume snapshots, and IP addresses — is preserved. Use it when you want a clean OS state without changing OS templates or losing your protective copies.

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Factory Reset vs Reinstall

Factory ResetReinstall (Change OS)
OS templateSame as beforePick a new one (or same)
OS diskWipedWiped
Attached volumesPreservedPreserved
BackupsPreservedDeleted
Volume snapshotsPreservedDeleted
VM (OS-disk) snapshotsDeletedDeleted
Network and IPsPreservedPreserved
VM specs (CPU/RAM/disk)PreservedPreserved
Steps in dialog1 (single confirm)3 (OS → auth → confirm)
Downtime15 seconds — 3 minutes1 — 5 minutes
If you want to keep your backups and volume snapshots, use Factory Reset instead of Reinstall.

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”Same OS template” means the original one

Factory Reset always reinstalls the template the VM was originally created with — not the most recent template. This matters when a VM has been reinstalled to a different template at some point in its life:
  • Created with Ubuntu 24.04 → reinstalled to Debian 12 → factory-reset
  • Result: back to Ubuntu 24.04, not Debian 12
Verified in services/vm-service/internal/services/vm_service.go (FactoryResetVM reads OriginalTemplateID). If you want to keep the most recent OS template, use Reinstall and pick the template you currently have. If you want to wipe back to the original, use Factory Reset.

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Where to find it

Factory Reset lives only on the VM detail page (it’s not in the row’s 3-dot menu — Reinstall OS is the only OS action there). Open the VM detail page → Actions tab → scroll to System Operations → on the Factory Reset card, click Factory Reset.

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The dialog

A single confirmation dialog opens. There’s no OS picker and no auth step — it reuses what’s already on the VM.
Factory Reset dialog showing what's preserved and reset, the unavailability warning, and the acknowledgement checkbox
What’s preserved:
  • All attached volumes and data
  • Backups and volume snapshots
  • Network configuration and IPs
What’s reset:
  • Operating system disk
  • VM snapshots (OS-disk snapshots only)
  • Installed software and configurations
Tick the acknowledgement and click Factory Reset. Expect 15 seconds to 3 minutes of downtime. See Storage model for the full picture of what survives this and other lifecycle events.

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What about VM snapshots?

Factory Reset deletes VM snapshots (point-in-time copies of the OS disk) because they reference the disk being wiped. Volume snapshots and backups survive — they live independently. If you have a VM-level snapshot you want to keep, restore from it before factory-resetting, or save it as an image first via Save VM disk as image.

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After

  • The VM transitions provisioning → booting → active, typically under 3 minutes.
  • Public IPv4 unchanged — DNS records still point to the right place.
  • Login is back to the regenerated root / Administrator password (emailed) or your existing SSH key, depending on what was set on the VM before the reset.
  • Attached volumes are still attached but may need re-mounting in the new OS — /etc/fstab is gone.

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Next steps

Reinstall a VM

Switch OS templates instead.

Snapshots vs Backups

What’s protected by which.
Last modified on May 9, 2026