Decommission an Application, Database or Environment
Retire an application, database or whole Environment you no longer need so that it stops costing money, and what to settle first.
This guide shows you how to retire an application, a database or a whole
Environment you no longer need, so that it stops costing money.
What you can remove yourself depends on the level:
| What you want to retire | Who removes it |
|---|---|
| An application Component (a Deployment) | You, in SVIEW |
| A Service you no longer use | You, in SVIEW, once it is empty |
| A database or other managed data service | CTO2B, on request, after the backup question is settled |
| A whole Environment — its cluster, networking and cloud resources | CTO2B, on request |
Only need to save money for a while? Suspending a non-production
Environment scales its workloads to zero and can be reversed in minutes, with
no data lost. See
Suspending Non-Production Environments and Databases.
Decommissioning is permanent.
Before you start
- Check what depends on it. A database, cache or queue is often shared by
several Components, sometimes across Services. Deleting it breaks every
Component that still connects to it. Check each Component'sdependency
block — see Dependency Configuration Examples — and
retire the consumers first. - Decide what data you need to keep. Once a database is removed, its data
cannot be recovered from the platform unless a snapshot was kept. Decide
whether you want a final snapshot and how long to keep it before you ask for
the removal. - Check your permissions. The Delete action only appears for users with
the application admin role (for Deployments) or the service admin role (for
Services). If you do not see it, ask your SVIEW administrator.
Delete an application Component
- Go to Applications → Deployments.
- Find the Component, open its Actions menu and click Delete.
- A dialog asks Are you sure you want to delete? and shows the
Component's full ID. Check that the ID is the one you mean — Components with
the same name exist in every Environment. - Click Delete.
The Component disappears from the list, and SVIEW removes it from the
Environment.
Do not use Delete for databases or other data services. Raise a request
instead, so that the backup and final-snapshot question is settled before
anything is removed. This applies to every Component that holds data: RDS,
Cloud SQL, Redis, Kafka, MongoDB and similar.
Delete an empty Service
- Go to Applications → Services.
- Open the Service's Actions menu and click Delete.
- Confirm the Service ID in the dialog and click Delete.
Delete the Components inside a Service before the Service itself.
Retire a database or a whole Environment
The Environment's Kubernetes cluster, its networking (VPC, NAT, load
balancers) and the cloud resources behind managed data services are managed by
CTO2B. Raise a request in your dedicated Slack channel with:
- What to remove — the Environment name and stage, or the exact database
and Component IDs as shown in SVIEW - Final snapshot — whether you want one for each database, and how long to
keep it - Anything to keep — for example a DNS record, a container registry, a
storage bucket or a secret that another Environment still uses - When — a date, or "as soon as possible"
- Confirmation that nothing else depends on it, and who approved the
removal on your side
Cloud costs stop once the resources are deleted; items such as retained
snapshots continue to cost a small amount until they expire.
Verify it worked
- The Component or Service no longer appears in SVIEW.
- For a retired Environment, we confirm in your request when the removal is
complete. Its costs stop accruing from that point, apart from anything you
asked us to keep.
Related articles
- Suspending Non-Production Environments and Databases — the reversible alternative
- Environments — how Environments are organised
- Dependency Configuration Examples — finding what uses a data service
- RDS Backup Retention — how long database backups are kept
Updated 26 days ago