Delete and restore projects

This page explains how to shut down and restore Cloud de Confiance by S3NS projects. Understand the 30-day recovery window, resource deletion timelines, and how to prevent data loss.

Shut down (delete) a project

Shutting down a project stops all billing and resource usage. This action immediately moves the project into a 30-day recovery period, after which the project and all associated data are permanently deleted. Only projects with a lifecycle state of ACTIVE can be shut down.

Deletion process and timeline

When you initiate a shutdown, the following events occur:

  1. Immediate shutdown: The project is immediately marked for deletion and becomes unusable.

  2. Notification: Cloud de Confiance by S3NS sends a notification email to the user who initiated the deletion and to any contacts listed in the Technical category of Essential Contacts.

  3. Billing disconnection: Any associated Cloud Billing account is disconnected. This association isn't automatically reinstated if the project is later restored.

  4. 30-day recovery window: The project remains in a DELETE_REQUESTED state for 30 days. During this period, project owners can restore the project.

  5. Permanent deletion: After 30 days, the project and all its resources are permanently deleted and can't be recovered.

Critical considerations

Before shutting down a project, review the following risks:

  • Resource recovery: While most resources are recoverable within the 30-day window, some services—such as Cloud Storage and Pub/Sub—delete resources much sooner. These might not be fully recoverable even if the project is restored.

  • Restoration delays: If you restore a project, some services may take up to 36 hours to fully resume operations.

  • Project IDs: Project IDs are unique and permanent. Once a project is fully deleted, its ID can't be reused. If you want to preserve a custom project ID for future use, delete the resources within the project instead of shutting down the project itself.

  • Project quota: Until a project is permanently deleted (after the 30-day window), it continues to count toward your project quota.

  • Billing charges: Projects may continue to incur charges until the current billing cycle ends. To avoid unexpected charges, disable billing manually before initiating a shutdown.

Safeguards

To prevent accidental deletion of business-critical projects, you can enable change risk recommendations. These recommendations provide warnings when you attempt to delete projects that Cloud de Confiance by S3NS has identified as important based on recent activity.

To learn more about data retention and safe deletion, see How Google retains data we collect.

You can shut down projects using the Cloud de Confiance console, Google Cloud CLI, or the API.

Console

  1. In the Cloud de Confiance console, go to the IAM & Admin Settings page.

    Go to IAM & Admin Settings

    The remaining steps appear in the Cloud de Confiance console.

  2. On the IAM & Admin Settings page, select the project you want to delete, and then click Shut down.

    Shut down only appears for users who have the resourcemanager.projects.delete permission in the current project.

  3. Click Shut down.
  4. Enter the project ID, and then click Shut down anyway.

gcloud

  1. In the Cloud de Confiance console, activate Cloud Shell.

    Activate Cloud Shell

    At the bottom of the Cloud de Confiance console, a Cloud Shell session starts and displays a command-line prompt. Cloud Shell is a shell environment with the Google Cloud CLI already installed and with values already set for your current project. It can take a few seconds for the session to initialize.

  2. To delete a project, use the gcloud projects delete command:

    gcloud projects delete PROJECT_ID

    Where PROJECT_ID is the ID of the project you want to delete.

REST

The following code snippet deletes the specified project:

Request:

DELETE https://cloudresourcemanager.googleapis.com/v3/projects/my-project-123

Troubleshoot project deletion

If you encounter issues while attempting to shut down or restore a project, it's typically due to permission constraints or specific resource "liens." For information, see Troubleshoot project deletion.

Restore a project

Project owners can restore a deleted project within the 30-day recovery period that begins when the project is shut down.

Restoring a project returns it to its state prior to shutdown, with the following exceptions:

  • Billing is disabled on the project when the project is shut down. It isn't automatically re-enabled upon restoration. You must manually link the project to a Cloud Billing account. You might need to wait a few hours before you can successfully link a recently restored project to a billing account.

  • You can recover most resources if you restore a project within the 30-day period. Some services such as Cloud Storage or Pub/Sub may delete data sooner than 30 days. These resources might not be fully recoverable.

  • It can take up to 36 hours for all services within a restored project to become fully functional. If your resources aren't restored after this period, reach out to Google support.

  • Some services might need to be restarted manually. For more information, see Restarting Cloud de Confiance by S3NS Services.

To restore a project, you must have the resourcemanager.projects.undelete permission on the project. To view projects pending deletion in the console, you also need the following permissions:

  • resourcemanager.projects.list
  • resourcemanager.folders.list (if the project is in a folder)
  • resourcemanager.projects.get

To restore a project, use one of the following methods:

Console

  1. In the Cloud de Confiance by S3NS console, go to the Manage resources page.

    Go to Manage resources

  2. In the Project picker at the top of the page, select your organization resource.

  3. Below the list of organization resources, folders, and projects, click Resources pending deletion.

  4. Select the checkbox for the project you want to restore, and then click Restore. In the dialog that appears, confirm that you want to restore the project.

gcloud

  1. In the Cloud de Confiance console, activate Cloud Shell.

    Activate Cloud Shell

    At the bottom of the Cloud de Confiance console, a Cloud Shell session starts and displays a command-line prompt. Cloud Shell is a shell environment with the Google Cloud CLI already installed and with values already set for your current project. It can take a few seconds for the session to initialize.

  2. To restore a project, use the gcloud projects undelete command:

    gcloud projects undelete PROJECT_ID

    PROJECT_ID is the project ID or project number of the project you want to restore.

REST

The following code snippet restores the specified project:

Request:

POST https://cloudresourcemanager.googleapis.com/v3/projects/my-project-123:undelete

What's next