How do I create, delete, or restore a default VPC in Amazon VPC?

Last updated: 2022-03-22

Each Region in your AWS account is provided a default VPC. You can use the default VPC instead of creating and configuring your own VPC. You can immediately start using the default VPC and launch AWS services, such as Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) instances into your default VPC. The following resolution covers basic questions about using a default VPC.

If you don't want to use the AWS provided default VPC, you can create a new one using the Amazon VPC console or the AWS Command Line Interface (AWS CLI). For more information, see Create a default VPC.

Deleting a default VPC, subnets, and internet gateway doesn't have any direct impact on your other AWS resources in non-default VPCs. Depending on the set up and your network architecture, there might be traffic impact. For example, VPC peering or transit gateway attachments for your default VPC. However, if you don't have any AWS resources carrying production traffic in your default VPC, then there won't be any impact.

Deleting your default VPC means that you'll need to launch resources in other VPCs. Without a default VPC or subnets you'll need to specify the VPC and subnet ids when launching EC2 instance and other resources. Beware that if you delete your default subnets or default VPC, you must explicitly specify a subnet in another VPC to launch your instance in to.

Before deleting your VPC, verify the following:

• Review the default VPC components.
• Make sure that all items are working properly in your manually-created VPC.
• Verify that the default VPC you want to delete doesn't have any resources or running services. Any services or resources on the default VPC won't be available after you delete it.

It isn't possible to select an existing non-default VPC as your new default VPC. It also isn't possible to restore a previous default VPC that you deleted.