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

Updated on 10 September, 2025

A guide explaining how to replace the operating system on your Vultr Optimized Cloud Compute instance.

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 Optimized Cloud Compute instance using the Vultr Customer Portal, API, CLI, or Terraform.

Warning
Changing to a different operating system wipes all the data on your server.
  • Vultr Customer Portal
  • Vultr API
  • Vultr CLI
  • Terraform
  1. Navigate to Products and click Compute.
  2. Click your target Vultr Optimized Cloud Compute instance to open its management page.
  3. Navigate to the Settings tab.
  4. Find and click Change OS on the left navigation menu.
  5. Click the Choose new OS drop-down and select a new operating system to install on your instance.
  6. Click Change OS to change the instance operating system.
  7. Check the Change OS confirmation prompt and click Change OS to apply the new instance changes.

  1. Send a GET request to the List Instances endpoint and note your target instance's ID.

    console 
    $ curl "https://api.vultr.com/v2/instances" \
  -X GET \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer ${VULTR_API_KEY}"

  2. Send a GET request to the List OS endpoint to view all available operating systems and note the target OS ID.

    console 
    $ curl "https://api.vultr.com/v2/os" \
  -X GET \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer ${VULTR_API_KEY}"

  3. Send a PATCH request to the Update Instance endpoint with a new os_id value to change the instance's operating system.

    console 
    $ curl "https://api.vultr.com/v2/instances/{instance-id}" \
-X PATCH \
-H "Authorization: Bearer ${VULTR_API_KEY}" \
-H "Content-Type: application/json" \
--data '{
  "os_id" : "new-instance-os_id"
}'

  1. List all available instances and note your target instance's ID.

    console 
    $ vultr-cli instance list

  2. List all available operating systems and note the target OS ID.

    console 
    $ vultr-cli instance os list <instance-id>

  3. Change the target instance's operating system.

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

  1. Open your Terraform configuration for the existing Optimized Cloud Compute instance.

  2. Update the os_id value in the instance resource to the new operating system ID.

    terraform 
    resource "vultr_instance" "occ" {
    # ...existing fields (region, plan, label, etc.)

    os_id = 1743  # Example: Ubuntu 22.04 LTS x64
}

  3. Apply the configuration and observe the following output:

    Apply complete! Resources: 0 added, 1 changed, 0 destroyed.

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