- NAME
-
- gcloud preview compute instances delete - delete Compute Engine virtual machine instances
- SYNOPSIS
-
-
gcloud preview compute instances deleteINSTANCE_NAMES[INSTANCE_NAMES…] [--zone=ZONE] [--delete-disks=DISK_TYPE|--keep-disks=DISK_TYPE] [GCLOUD_WIDE_FLAG …]
-
- DESCRIPTION
-
(PREVIEW)gcloud preview compute instances deletedeletes one or more Compute Engine virtual machine instances. - EXAMPLES
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To delete an instance called 'instance-1' in the zone 'us-central-2-a', run:
gcloud preview compute instances delete instance-1 --zone=us-central2-a - POSITIONAL ARGUMENTS
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INSTANCE_NAMES[INSTANCE_NAMES…]- Names of the instances to delete. For details on valid instance names, refer to the criteria documented under the field 'name' at: https://cloud.google.com/compute/docs/reference/rest/v1/instances
- FLAGS
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--zone=ZONE-
Zone of the instances to delete. If not specified, you might be prompted to
select a zone (interactive mode only).
gcloudattempts to identify the appropriate zone by searching for resources in your currently active project. If the zone cannot be determined,gcloudprompts you for a selection with all available Google Cloud Platform zones.To avoid prompting when this flag is omitted, the user can set the
property:compute/zonegcloud config set compute/zone ZONEA list of zones can be fetched by running:
gcloud compute zones listTo unset the property, run:
gcloud config unset compute/zoneAlternatively, the zone can be stored in the environment variable
.CLOUDSDK_COMPUTE_ZONE -
At most one of these can be specified:
--delete-disks=DISK_TYPE-
The types of disks to delete with instance deletion regardless of the disks'
auto-delete configuration. When this flag is provided, the auto-delete bits on
the attached disks are modified accordingly before the instance deletion
requests are issued. For more information on disk auto-deletion, see Set
the auto-delete state of a zonal persistent disk.
DISK_TYPEmust be one of:all- All disk types.
boot- The first partition is reserved for the root filesystem.
data- A non-boot disk.
--keep-disks=DISK_TYPE-
The types of disks to not delete with instance deletion regardless of the disks'
auto-delete configuration. When this flag is provided, the auto-delete bits on
the attached disks are modified accordingly before the instance deletion
requests are issued. For more information on disk auto-deletion, see Set
the auto-delete state of a zonal persistent disk.
DISK_TYPEmust be one of:all- All disk types.
boot- The first partition is reserved for the root filesystem.
data- A non-boot disk.
- GCLOUD WIDE FLAGS
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These flags are available to all commands:
--access-token-file,--account,--billing-project,--configuration,--flags-file,--flatten,--format,--help,--impersonate-service-account,--log-http,--project,--quiet,--trace-token,--user-output-enabled,--verbosity.Run
$ gcloud helpfor details. - NOTES
-
This command is currently in DEVELOPER PREVIEW and may change without notice. If
this command fails with API permission errors despite specifying the correct
project, you might be trying to access an API with an invitation-only early
access allowlist. These variants are also available:
gcloud compute instances deletegcloud alpha compute instances deletegcloud beta compute instances delete
gcloud preview compute instances delete
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Last updated 2026-04-14 UTC.