How to Change the Operating System on a Vultr Cloud Compute Instance

1 min readUpdated 4 November 2026

Install a different OS on a Vultr Cloud Compute instance while keeping its IP address. All data is wiped.

Changing the instance operating system wipes all data on your server and installs a new file system. Use this option to change the operating system while keeping the instance's IP networking information.

Follow this guide to change the operating system on a Vultr Cloud Compute instance using the Vultr Console, API, CLI, or Terraform.

Warning

Changing to a different operating system wipes all the data on your server.

Navigate to Compute and click Instances.
Click your target Vultr Cloud Compute instance to open its management page.
Navigate to the Settings tab.
Find and click Change OS on the left navigation menu.
Click the Choose new OS drop-down and select a new operating system to install on the instance.
Click Change OS to change the instance operating system.
Select the checkbox in the Change OS confirmation prompt and click Change OS to apply the new instance changes.

3 Comments

1last month

vultr-cli instance os list <instance-id>

0last month

> omanaziz221:

vultr-cli instance os list <instance-id>

0last month

vultr-cli instance os change <instance-id> --os <os_id>

Change the Operating System on Vultr Cloud Compute | Vultr Docs