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Overview

The Virtual Machines screen is your instance inventory and the place you act on individual machines. It lists every VM in your current region context, and clicking one opens a detail page with eight sections and the full set of lifecycle actions.
Navigation: Compute → Virtual Machines. The page is titled Virtual Machines, subtitled “Manage and monitor your virtual machine instances across all regions”.
The console says “virtual machine”; the dashboard and the API say “instance”. Same resource — see vocabulary.

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Choosing a view

A toggle in the toolbar switches between Cards and Table. Cards suit a handful of machines you recognise by name; Table suits scanning many at once and is the only view with sortable columns. Your choice persists.

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Columns

Name, Public IP, and Private IP sort in three states — click once for ascending, again for descending, a third time to clear.
Columns drop out as the window narrows, and they do it silently. Public IP and Private IP collapse to one column below roughly 656px, Resources disappears below ~848px, Zone below ~1000px (it also needs a viewport wider than 1280px), and Tags below ~1060px. If a column you expect is missing, widen the window before assuming the data is absent.

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Statuses

Five display states, each with its own colour: The platform tracks more granular states than these, which the list collapses:
The status badge on the detail page has no Destroyed case and falls back to displaying Running. So a destroyed machine can read “Running” on its own detail page while the list correctly shows it as Destroyed. Trust the list. This is a known display defect, not a machine that came back to life.

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Filtering

The Filters control shows a dot when a filter is active. When a filter is on, a banner above the table reports how many rows are included and excluded, with a Clear Filters action.
Destroyed machines are hidden by default. If a VM you just deleted has vanished entirely rather than showing as Destroyed, switch on Include Destroyed — it is probably still in the recoverable window.

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Bulk actions

Select rows with the checkboxes and a bar appears above the first selected row reading {n} VMs selected, with icon buttons for Start selected VMs, Stop selected VMs, Restart selected VMs, and Delete selected VMs, plus Clear Selection.
Bulk operations are dispatched in parallel, not queued. Fifty selected machines means fifty simultaneous requests. On a large selection, expect some to fail on quota or contention while others succeed — check Monitor → Jobs for the real per-machine outcome rather than assuming the whole batch worked.

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Row actions

The kebab menu adapts to the machine’s state. Actions show a progress label while running (Start VM becomes Starting...).
Assign Public IP and Unassign Public IP appear based on verified inventory rather than optimism. If the public-IP inventory failed to load, neither appears — the console will not offer an action it cannot confirm is valid.

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The detail page

Clicking a machine opens it with a breadcrumb of Compute / Virtual Machines / {name}. The breadcrumb name is a switcher — you can jump to another machine without going back to the list. Sections in order, each with its own page here:
Snapshots only appears if your account is entitled to VM snapshots, which is off by default. Without the entitlement the section isn’t in the nav at all. See VM Snapshots.
There is no Console section. The console opens in its own window from the Open Console button instead — see The console.
Failing to load the detail page shows Failed to Load VM Details with a Try Again button.

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Actions on the detail page

The header carries a wider set of actions than the list’s kebab:
Reset Password is disabled while the machine runs, with the tooltip “Stop the VM first to reset password”. It also only appears at all for templates built with password reset support.

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Lifecycle

The distinction that matters: Delete moves a machine to Destroyed, which is reversible with Recover. Expunge is not reversible. Deleting with the Expunge immediately option skips the recoverable state entirely.

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Common tasks

1

Open Scale

Use Scale VM from the row menu, or Scale on the detail page.
2

Pick a new offering

The current offering is shown locked for reference. Choose the target offering.
3

Confirm

The machine is scaled with automatic migration enabled, so the platform may move it to a host with room.
You’ll see VM "{name}" is being scaled to {offering} on success.
Scaling is blocked entirely while the machine has VM snapshots — the dialog explains this instead of failing. Delete its VM snapshots first.
Clone VM opens “Create a copy of this virtual machine with a new name.”The dialog shows the source machine and its state so you can confirm you’re cloning the right one.
The dialog is titled Destroy VM, or Permanently Delete VM when expunging.
1

Decide on the recovery window

Leave Expunge immediately off to keep the machine recoverable. Switching it on means “Skip destroyed state — permanently delete all data now”.
2

Choose which data volumes go with it

The dialog lists the machine’s data volumes under Data Volumes (n) so you can select which to delete alongside it, and confirms {n} volume(s) will be deleted. Root volumes aren’t listed — they always go with the machine.
3

Type the name

Confirmation requires typing the machine’s name exactly. A mismatch reports Name doesn't match — type exactly: {name}.
Data volumes you don’t select survive the deletion, detached, and keep consuming storage quota. This is the most common source of storage that appears to belong to nothing — see Volumes.
Take Snapshot captures the whole machine.The dialog summarises what you’ll get: Full VM Snapshot (disk and memory) or Disk-only Snapshot (volumes only).
A running machine cannot be captured disk-only. The dialog says: “Enable Include Memory, or power off the VM before taking a disk-only snapshot.” Requires the VM Snapshots entitlement — see VM Snapshots.

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Creating a virtual machine

Six steps: Basics, Compute, Storage, Network, SSH Keys, Backups.
1

Basics

VM Name and Zones, then the boot source as one of four tabs:Volume and Snapshot sources also require an OS Type, because the platform can’t infer it from raw disk contents.If a tab is empty you’ll see a specific message — “No templates available for this zone”, “No bootable volumes available for this zone”, and so on. That’s zone-scoped, so another zone may have options.
2

Compute

Pick a compute offering — the vCPU and memory shape. Quick filters narrow the list: All, General, Compute optimized, Memory optimized, Storage optimized, plus a search box.
3

Storage

Size the root disk and optionally add data volumes.
4

Network

Choose a Virtual Private Cloud and a network inside it, then decide on public addressing:Private IP address (Optional) lets you request a specific address, e.g. 10.0.1.25. You can add a Secondary Network and a Third Network, each with its own private address.
If the VPC list is empty the wizard says so and offers to create one inline, rather than dead-ending.
5

SSH Keys

Attach registered public keys. Optional, but see the warning below.
6

Backups

Enable backups selects a Backup Plan. Enable automated backup schedule adds Interval, Timezone, and the time fields for the interval you pick.Defaults are daily at 02:00 UTC. Detail in Backups.
Attaching an SSH key is optional, and skipping it is hard to undo. Unless your template supports password reset, a machine created without a key may be unreachable — and Reset Password requires stopping it. Attach a key at create time.
Inside the wizard’s SSH key list, the view public key, copy key, and rename row actions are not yet available — they’re present but inert. Manage keys from SSH Keys.

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What creation actually does

The response to the wizard means accepted, not finished. Public IP assignment and backup enrolment run as follow-up work after the machine exists, so a VM can be Running for a few seconds before its address appears.
If a machine sits in Pending far longer than its peers, open Monitor → Jobs and filter to the last hour. A failed job carries the reason inline — usually a quota ceiling or no capacity in the chosen zone.

Volumes

The disks attached to your machines, and what survives deletion.

Public IPs

Making a machine reachable with Static NAT.

SSH Keys

Register keys before you create machines.

Jobs

Whether your last action actually finished.