How Can I Destroy My Instance While Maintaining Its Backups?

When you destroy a Compute instance with Automatic Backups enabled, Vultr retains only the two most recent backups for that instance. Older backups are automatically removed as part of the backup rotation process. Once the instance is deleted, its associated backups remain available for recovery until they age out of retention.

If you need to keep an image of the instance indefinitely, you should convert an existing backup into a snapshot before destroying the instance. Snapshots are user-managed images that do not expire and remain in your account until you delete them manually. This ensures you always have a restorable copy of the instance regardless of the backup rotation schedule.

For the most reliable preservation of your instance’s state:

1. Create or convert the latest backup into a snapshot.
2. Verify the snapshot appears in your Products → Orchestration → Snapshots list in the Vultr Customer Portal.
3. Destroy the instance once you have confirmed the snapshot exists.

By converting backups to snapshots, you can safely decommission instances while maintaining long-term access to their full disk images.