Deleting an instance

To complete the life cycle of an instance, you will need to delete it. Nova provides a facility for this, using the openstack command-line tool.

Getting ready

To delete an instance, you will need the following:

• The openstack command-line client

• The openrc file containing appropriate credentials

• The name of the instance

How to do it…

In this example, we will be deleting the cookbook.test instance created in the Booting an instance recipe used for booting. To delete the instance, use the following steps:

1. First, list the running instances:

   openstack server list
   

   

2. To delete the instance named cookbook.test, issue the following command:

   openstack server delete cookbook.test
   

   Note

   This command produces no output when successful.

3. Now list the instances again to confirm the deletion:

   openstack server list
   

   This will bring back an output, where the instance we have deleted is now not present:

   

How it works…

The openstack server delete command, unlike suspending or shelving an instance, deletes...