Delete a cluster

This document explains how to delete a cluster in Cluster Director.

When you no longer need a cluster and its associated resources, you can permanently delete it to save costs and free up resources. Deleting a cluster is an irreversible action that also deletes all of its virtual machine (VM) instances and Slurm configuration.

Before you begin

Select the tab for how you plan to use the samples on this page:

Console

When you use the Google Cloud console to access Google Cloud services and APIs, you don't need to set up authentication.

gcloud

In the Google Cloud console, activate Cloud Shell.

Activate Cloud Shell

At the bottom of the Google Cloud console, a Cloud Shell session starts and displays a command-line prompt. Cloud Shell is a shell environment with the Google Cloud CLI already installed and with values already set for your current project. It can take a few seconds for the session to initialize.

REST

To use the REST API samples on this page in a local development environment, you use the credentials you provide to the gcloud CLI.

    Install the Google Cloud CLI. After installation, initialize the Google Cloud CLI by running the following command: 

    gcloud init

    If you're using an external identity provider (IdP), you must first sign in to the gcloud CLI with your federated identity.

For more information, see Authenticate for using REST in the Google Cloud authentication documentation.

Required roles

To get the permission that you need to delete clusters, ask your administrator to grant you the following IAM roles:

For more information about granting roles, see Manage access to projects, folders, and organizations.

This predefined role contains the hypercomputecluster.clusters.delete permission, which is required to delete clusters.

You might also be able to get this permission with custom roles or other predefined roles.

Delete a cluster

To delete a cluster in your project, select one of the following options:

Console

  1. In the Google Cloud console, go to the Clusters page.

    Go to Clusters

  2. In the Clusters table, in the Name column, click the name of the cluster that you want to delete. A page that gives the details of the cluster appears, and the Details tab is selected.

  3. Click Delete.

  4. In the dialog that appears, enter the name of your cluster, and then click Delete to confirm.

    The Clusters page appears. Deleting your cluster can take some time to complete.

gcloud

To delete a cluster, use the gcloud alpha cluster-director clusters delete command.

To run the command, select one of the following options:

Bash 

gcloud alpha cluster-director clusters delete CLUSTER_NAME \
    --location=REGION

Powershell 

gcloud alpha cluster-director clusters delete CLUSTER_NAME `
    --location=REGION

cmd.exe 

gcloud alpha cluster-director clusters delete CLUSTER_NAME ^
    --location=REGION

Replace the following:

  • CLUSTER_NAME: the name of the cluster that you want to delete.

  • REGION: the region where your cluster exists.

The output is similar to the following:

Delete request issued for: [cluster000]
Waiting for operation [projects/example-project/locations/us-central1/operations/operation-1759334170069-6401ae83f88df-342228e4-42174ca2] to complete...working...

Deleting your cluster can take some time to complete. When it does complete, the output is similar to the following:

Deleted cluster [cluster000].

REST

To delete a cluster, make a DELETE request to the clusters.delete method.

Your request must include the following HTTP method and request URL:

DELETE https://hypercomputecluster.googleapis.com/v1/projects/PROJECT_ID/locations/REGION/clusters/CLUSTER_NAME

Replace the following:

  • PROJECT_ID: the ID of your project.

  • REGION: the region where your cluster exists.

  • CLUSTER_NAME: the name of the cluster that you want to delete.

To send your request, select one of the following options:

curl (Bash) 

curl -X DELETE \
     -H "Authorization: Bearer $(gcloud auth print-access-token)" \
     "https://hypercomputecluster.googleapis.com/v1/projects/PROJECT_ID/locations/REGION/clusters/CLUSTER_NAME"

Powershell 

$cred = gcloud auth print-access-token
$headers = @{ "Authorization" = "Bearer $cred" }

Invoke-WebRequest `
    -Method DELETE `
    -Headers $headers `
    -Uri "https://hypercomputecluster.googleapis.com/v1/projects/PROJECT_ID/locations/REGION/clusters/CLUSTER_NAME" | Select-Object -Expand Content

curl (cmd.exe) 

curl -X DELETE ^
     -H "Authorization: Bearer $(gcloud auth print-access-token)" ^
     "https://hypercomputecluster.googleapis.com/v1/projects/PROJECT_ID/locations/REGION/clusters/CLUSTER_NAME"

The response is similar to the following:

{
  "name": "projects/example-project/locations/us-central1/operations/operation-1758790097068-63f9c3af860a4-1f0c5497-8b116854",
  "metadata": {
    "@type": "type.googleapis.com/google.cloud.hypercomputecluster.v1.OperationMetadata",
    "createTime": "2025-09-25T08:48:17.077238445Z",
    "target": "projects/example-project/locations/us-central1/clusters/clusterfpv",
    "verb": "delete",
    "requestedCancellation": false,
    "apiVersion": "v1"
  },
  "done": false
}

Deleting your cluster can take some time to complete.

What's next?