Oracle Cloud Infrastructure Documentation

Terminating an Instance

You can permanently delete (terminate) instances that you no longer need. Any attached VNICs and volumes are automatically detached when the instance terminates. Eventually, the instance's public and private IP addresses are released and become available for other instances.

By default, the instance's boot volume is preserved when you terminate the instance. You can attach the boot volume to a different instance as a data volume, or use it to launch a new instance. If you no longer need the boot volume, you can permanently delete it at the same time that you terminate the instance.

Caution

If your instance has NVMe storage, terminating the instance securely erases the NVMe drives. Any data that was on the NVMe drives becomes unrecoverable. Ensure that you back up any important data before you terminate an instance. For more information, see Protecting Data on NVMe Devices.

Required IAM Policy

To use Oracle Cloud Infrastructure, you must be granted security access in a policy  by an administrator. This access is required whether you're using the Console or the REST API with an SDK, CLI, or other tool. If you get a message that you don’t have permission or are unauthorized, verify with your administrator what type of access you have and which compartment  to work in.

For administrators: The policy in Let users launch compute instances includes the ability to terminate an instance (with or without an attached block volume).

If you're new to policies, see Getting Started with Policies and Common Policies. For reference material about writing policies for instances, cloud networks, or other Core Services API resources, see Details for the Core Services.

Using the Console

  1. Open the navigation menu and click Compute. Under Compute, click Instances.
  2. Click the instance that you're interested in.

  3. Click Terminate.

  4. If you want to delete the boot volume that is associated with the instance, select the Permanently delete the attached boot volume check box.

  5. Click Terminate instance.

    The instance is deleted. The record remains visible in the list of instances with the state Terminated for at least 12 hours, but no further action is needed.