Delete snapshot¶

If you snapshotted an entire instance (and created and image, there will be two parts to delete, the volume snapshot(s) and the created image. Each can (and should) be deleted irrespectively from each other. Deleting a snapshot is not the same as removing data. When you delete a snapshot you remove the ability to revert to that snapshot, i.e. you consolidate the current state of the disk in the base image (or most recent snapshot).

Note

If your intent was to revert to a snapshot so as to bring the instance or volume back to the state of taking the snapshot, please see our Launch instance from image guide which does this.

We recommend only having snapshots for limited periods of time. The more writes that are added to a snapshot, the longer it will take to consolidate. Because of this, snapshots should be regularly deleted.

In the below example, we will delete both the image and the volume snapshots. If you only snapshotted a volume, then the image will not be available and the first two steps can be skipped.

Cloud management portal¶

To delete a snapshot using the Cloud management portal, follow these steps:

Press “Compute” and then “Images” in the sidebar menu.
Press the delete button (looking like a trashcan) of the image/snapshot you want to delete.
Press “Storage” and then “Snapshots” in the sidebar menu.
Press the delete button (looking like a trashcan) of the image/snapshot you want to delete.

Note

If you are unsure of which volume snapshot to delete, its possible to press it and then press its related volumes and in turn, the volumes related instances. The image is just meta-data and has no ties the the actual instance it was modeled from.

OpenStack Horizon¶

To delete a snapshot using OpenStack Horizon, follow these steps:

Under “project”, click “Compute” and then “Images” in the sidebar menu.
Locate the image in the list and press “Delete image” from its drop down menu to the right.
Under “project”, click “Volumes” and then “Snapshots” in the sidebar menu.
Locate the snapshot in the list and press “Delete snapshot” from its drop down menu to the right.

Note

If you are unsure of which volume snapshot to delete, its possible to press the ID of the Volume to see which instance its attached to. The image is just meta-data and has no ties the the actual instance it was modeled from.

OpenStack Terminal Client¶

To delete a snapshot using the OpenStack terminal client, follow these steps:

Run this command: openstack image list --private, save the ID of the image/snapshot that you want to delete.
Run this command: openstack image delete [ID_OF_IMAGE], specifying the ID of the image.
Run this command: openstack volume snapshot list, save the ID of the snapshot that you want to delete.
Run this command: openstack volume snapshot delete [SNAPSHOT_ID], specifying the ID of the snapshot to delete.

Note

If you are unsure of which volume snapshot to delete, its possible to run openstack volume snapshot show [SNAPSHOT_ID] to get information on what volume it was created from. Based on the volume ID, you could then run openstack volume show [VOLUME_ID] -c attachements to get information on the attachment’s of the volume (i.e. which instance its attached to). Finally, using the “server_id”, you can get the instance of the volume as such openstack server show [SERVER_ID] -c name. The image is just meta-data and has no ties the the actual instance it was modeled from.