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Environment Deletion

Deleting an environment disconnects Fractal Cloud from your cloud account. This page explains exactly what happens, what stays, and what gets removed.

What happens when you delete an environment​

When you delete an environment through the Web UI, SDK, or API, Fractal Cloud performs a clean separation:

Removed (Cloud Agent resources)​

These resources were created during environment initialization to run the Cloud Agent. They are fully removed:

  • The Cloud Agent process (ECS task, Container Instance, GKE pod, etc.)
  • IAM roles and policies created for the agent
  • Networking resources used exclusively by the agent (security groups, VPC endpoints for agent communication)
  • The agent's mTLS certificate registration in the Control Plane
  • The environment record in the Control Plane

Kept (your infrastructure)​

Everything the Cloud Agent provisioned on your behalf remains running and untouched:

  • VPCs, subnets, route tables, internet gateways
  • Kubernetes clusters and their workloads
  • Databases (PostgreSQL, MySQL, DynamoDB, Cloud SQL, etc.)
  • Load balancers, DNS records, CDN distributions
  • Storage accounts, S3 buckets, GCS buckets
  • Security groups, firewalls, WAF rules
  • Any other cloud resource created by your Live Systems

Your live systems continue operating exactly as they were. There is no Fractal Cloud runtime embedded in your resources. They are standard cloud resources provisioned through standard cloud APIs.

What stops working​

After environment deletion:

  • Drift detection stops. The agent is no longer running, so no one is comparing your actual state against the desired state. Manual changes to your resources will no longer be detected or corrected.
  • Reconciliation stops. If a resource fails or is accidentally deleted, it will not be automatically recreated.
  • Output field propagation stops. Components that depend on output values from other components (connection strings, IP addresses) will retain their last-known values but won't receive updates.

Your resources themselves are unaffected. Only the automated management layer is removed.

How to delete an environment​

Through the Web UI​

  1. Navigate to Environments
  2. Select the environment you want to delete
  3. Click Delete Environment
  4. Confirm the deletion

Through the SDK​

fractalCloud.deleteEnvironment(environmentId);

Through the API​

DELETE /environments/{type}/{ownerId}/{shortName}

Re-adopting infrastructure after deletion​

If you later decide to reconnect your infrastructure to Fractal Cloud:

  1. Create a new environment targeting the same cloud account
  2. Initialize the Cloud Agent — the agent deploys into your account
  3. The agent discovers existing resources — resources that still carry the managed-by: fractal-cloud tag are recognized and adopted back into management
  4. Reconciliation resumes — the agent compares desired state against actual state and reports any drift that occurred while unmanaged

This means environment deletion is fully reversible. You can disconnect, operate independently for as long as you need, and reconnect when ready.

Permanent departure​

If you're leaving Fractal Cloud entirely:

  1. Delete all environments — agents and their resources are removed
  2. Optionally remove tags — remove the managed-by: fractal-cloud tags from your resources if you want a fully clean state. This is cosmetic — the tags have no functional effect without a running agent.
  3. Your infrastructure is yours — manage it with Terraform, Pulumi, the cloud console, or any other tool. The resources are standard cloud resources with no Fractal Cloud dependencies.

If you want your Fractal definitions preserved as industry-standard Infrastructure as Code before leaving, see Terraform Extraction.