In OpenStack, by default users who are members of a tenant can delete all instances in that tenant, even if it is spinned up by other users. If you want to restrict that, you need to tweak the nova policy file ie /etc/nova/policy.json Add the following lines in the file: "admin_or_user":"is_admin:True or user_id:%(user_id)s", "compute:delete":"rule:admin_or_user", Make the same changes in the /etc/openstack-dashboard/nova_policy.json file also Now restart the openstack-nova-api service Now user will be able to delete only those instances spinned up by them. Admin users will be able to delete all instances