Managing Instances

Once your cloud instance is running, the instance detail page gives you full control over power state, monitoring, configuration, and lifecycle management.

Power Controls

Power controls are available from the instance detail page. Each action changes the instance's power state.

When to Use Each Action

• Stop — Temporarily pause an instance you don't need running (note: billing continues for disk and IP)
• Reboot — Apply kernel updates or restart services that require a full reboot
• Force Power Off — Instance is frozen, unresponsive to SSH, and graceful shutdown has no effect

Rescue Mode

Rescue mode boots your instance into a minimal Linux rescue system, bypassing your installed OS. This is essential for emergency recovery when your instance won't boot normally.

Enabling Rescue Mode

1. Go to your instance detail page
2. Click Enable Rescue in the power controls section
3. Confirm the action — the instance will reboot into rescue mode
4. Connect via Console Access (VNC or serial terminal)

What You Can Do in Rescue Mode

• Mount and inspect your instance's disk
• Repair broken /etc/fstab entries
• Reset a forgotten root password
• Recover files from a corrupted filesystem
• Fix bootloader issues (GRUB)

# List available disks
lsblk

# Mount your root partition
mount /dev/sda1 /mnt

# Chroot into your system
chroot /mnt

# Reset root password
passwd root

# Exit chroot
exit

Disabling Rescue Mode

1. Click Disable Rescue on the instance detail page
2. The instance reboots back to its normal operating system

For more details, see the dedicated Rescue Mode page.

Monitoring

The instance detail page includes real-time monitoring graphs powered by Proxmox VE RRD data. Metrics are available for the current instance with multiple time ranges.

Available Metrics

Time Ranges

• 1 Hour — Granular, per-minute data for real-time troubleshooting
• 24 Hours — Identify daily patterns and peak usage
• 7 Days — Weekly trends for capacity planning
• 30 Days — Monthly overview for billing correlation

Resize (Change Plan)

Resize your instance to a different plan to increase (or decrease) CPU, RAM, and disk allocation.

How to Resize

1. Stop the instance (resize requires the instance to be powered off)
2. Go to Settings on the instance detail page
3. Click Resize
4. Select the new plan
5. Confirm and click Resize
6. Start the instance

Resize Rules

After Resizing

After starting the resized instance, verify the new resources are detected:

# Check CPU cores
nproc

# Check RAM
free -h

# Check disk size
df -h

If the filesystem hasn't expanded to fill the new disk, extend it:

# For ext4 filesystems
resize2fs /dev/sda1

# For XFS filesystems
xfs_growfs /

Rebuild

Rebuild replaces your instance's operating system with a fresh image. This is a destructive operation — all data on the instance's root disk is permanently erased.

How to Rebuild

1. Go to Settings on the instance detail page
2. Click Rebuild
3. Select the new OS image and version
4. Type the instance name to confirm (safety check)
5. Click Rebuild

The instance will shut down, wipe the disk, deploy the new image, and restart. This typically takes 15-30 seconds.

Use Cases for Rebuild

• Switch from Ubuntu to Rocky Linux (or any other supported OS)
• Start fresh after configuration drift
• Recover from a compromised system
• Test different OS versions

Rename

Change your instance's display name at any time:

1. Go to Settings on the instance detail page
2. Click Rename
3. Enter the new name
4. Click Save

Renaming does not affect the hostname inside the OS — it only changes the display name in the dashboard. To change the OS hostname, SSH into the instance and run:

hostnamectl set-hostname new-hostname

Boot Order

Configure the boot device priority for your instance. This controls which device the instance boots from on startup.

Default Boot Order

1. scsi0 — Primary NVMe disk (your OS)
2. ide2 — CD-ROM / ISO (used by rescue mode)
3. net0 — Network boot (PXE)

Changing Boot Order

1. Go to Settings on the instance detail page
2. Click Boot Order
3. Drag devices to reorder them
4. Click Save

Destroy

Permanently delete an instance and release all associated resources. This action is irreversible.

How to Destroy

1. Go to Settings on the instance detail page
2. Click Destroy
3. Type the instance name to confirm (safety check)
4. Click Destroy Instance

What Gets Deleted

• The instance and its root disk
• The assigned public IPv4 address (released back to the pool)
• The assigned IPv6 block
• Monitoring data

What is NOT Deleted

• Block storage volumes (must be detached and deleted separately)
• Snapshots (must be deleted separately)
• SSH keys (project-level, not instance-specific)
• Private networks (project-level resource)
• Floating IPs (must be released separately)

Labels

Labels are key-value pairs you can attach to instances for organization and filtering.

Adding Labels

1. Go to the instance detail page
2. Click Labels in the sidebar or settings area
3. Click Add Label
4. Enter a key and value (e.g., env = production)
5. Click Save

Common Label Patterns

Labels can be used to filter instances in the dashboard list view. See Labels & Tags for more details.

Instance Lifecycle Summary

Next Steps

• Networking — Configure firewalls, floating IPs, and private networks
• Storage — Attach volumes, create snapshots, manage backups
• Console Access — Access your instance via VNC or serial terminal
• Cloud Compute Overview — Full plan list, regions, and pricing
• API Keys — Automate instance management via the REST API