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

1 min readUpdated 26 May 2026

Changing the instance operating system wipes all data on your server and installs a new file system. This is important when changing the default operating system while preserving the instance's IP and 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 Products and click Compute.
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.
Check the Change OS confirmation prompt and click Change OS to apply the new instance changes.

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