13.12. Deleting virtual machines¶

DELETE /servers/{server_id}

Delete a server with the specified ID.

By default, the instance is going to be hard-deleted immediately from the system, but you can set reclaim_instance_interval > 0 to make the API soft-delete the instance, so that the instance will not be deleted until the reclaim_instance_interval has expired since the instance was soft-deleted. The instance marked as SOFT_DELETED can be recovered via restore action before it is really deleted from the system.

Preconditions:

• The server must exist.
• Anyone can delete a server when the status of the server is not locked and when the policy allows.
• If the server is locked, you must have administrator privileges to delete the server.

Asynchronous postconditions:

• With correct permissions, you can see the server status as deleting.
• The ports attached to the server, which Nova created during the server create process or when attaching interfaces later, are deleted.
• The server does not appear in the list servers response.
• If hard delete, the server managed by OpenStack Compute is deleted on the compute node.

Troubleshooting:

• If server status remains to be deleting or another error, the request failed. Ensure that you meet the preconditions. Then, investigate the compute back end.
• The request returns the HTTP 409 response code when the server is locked even if you have correct permissions. Ensure that you meet the preconditions then investigate the server status.
• The server managed by OpenStack Compute is not deleted from the compute node.

Source: https://docs.openstack.org/api-ref/compute/?expanded=#delete-server

# curl -ks -X DELETE -H 'Content-Type: application/json' -H 'X-Auth-Token: gAAAAA<...>' \
https://<node_IP_addr>:8774/v2.1/f5d834d636c642c7bfe8af86139c6f26/servers/642b7726-bc3b-4824-872b-124097d2d20c