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Elastic Compute Service:Economical mode

Last Updated:Nov 09, 2023

You can enable economical mode to recycle specific resources of Elastic Compute Service (ECS) instances and reduce costs while retaining instances. This topic describes the conditions for enabling economical mode, resources that support economical mode, and conditions for triggering economical mode.

Conditions for enabling economical mode

Warning

Economical mode may cause risks. For more information, see the "Risks" section of this topic.

Instances that meet the following conditions support economical mode:

  • The network type of the instances is Virtual Private Cloud (VPC).

    You can migrate ECS instances from the classic network to VPCs. For more information, see Migrate ECS instances from the classic network to a VPC.

  • The instance is a pay-as-you-go or preemptible instance.

    You can change the billing method of ECS instances from subscription to pay-as-you-go. For more information, see Change the billing method of an instance from subscription to pay-as-you-go.

  • The instance family of the instance is not equipped with local storage.

    Instance families that are equipped with local storage do not support economical mode, such as big data instance families and instance families that use local SSDs. For information about how to view instance types that are equipped with local storage, see the Local storage column in Overview of instance families.

  • The instance family of the instance is not equipped with persistent memory.

    Instance families that are equipped with persistent memory do not support economical mode, such as re6p and re6p-redis instance families. For information about how to view instance types that are equipped with persistent memory, see the Persistent memory column in Overview of instance families.

Supported resources

When ECS instances are stopped in economical mode, the resources that support economical mode are recycled and no longer incur charges. The following ECS resources support economical mode:

  • Computing resources, including vCPUs and memory. The GPUs, Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs), and Network Processing Units (NPUs) of heterogeneous computing instances also support economical mode and can be recycled.

  • Auto-assigned public IP addresses and public bandwidth.

When ECS instances are stopped in economical mode, the resources that do not support economical mode are retained and continue to be billed based on the pay-as-you-go billing method. ECS resources that do not support economical mode include but are not limited to the following resources:

  • System disks

  • Data disks

  • Elastic IP addresses (EIPs) and EIP bandwidth

  • Images

  • Snapshots

Conditions for triggering economical mode

After economical mode is enabled, the mode can be triggered only for pay-as-you-go or preemptible instances that are stopped due to one of the following reasons:

  • Operations in the ECS console. For more information, see Stop an instance.

  • API requests initiated by Alibaba Cloud CLI or SDKs. For more information, see StopInstance.

  • Overdue payments.

Economical mode cannot be triggered in the scenarios that include but are not limited to the following ones:

  • If you stop an instance from within its operating system, economical mode cannot be triggered.

  • When an instance starts for the first time and is transitioning from the Stopped state to the Running state, economical mode cannot be triggered. For more information, see Instance lifecycle.

Risks

If an instance is stopped in economical mode, the computing resources (vCPUs and memory) and auto-assigned public IP address of the instance are recycled and no longer incur charges. However, the following risks exist:

  • After the computing resources (vCPUs and memory) are recycled, the instance may fail to be restarted due to insufficient resources. If the preceding issue occurs, try again later or change the instance to another instance type. For more information, see Change the instance type of a pay-as-you-go instance.

  • When the instance is restarted, a new public IP address is automatically assigned to the instance and may be different from the previous auto-assigned public IP address that is recycled. The private IP address of the instance remains unchanged.

    Important

    If your application depends on a specific public IP address, we recommend that you disable economical mode or convert the auto-assigned public IP address into an EIP. For more information, see the Disable economical mode for your entire account section of this topic or Convert the public IP address of an instance in a VPC to an EIP.

  • If the instance is a burstable instance, the instance stops earning CPU credits and the CPU credit balance is cleared. When you restart the instance, the instance starts earning CPU credits again. For more information about CPU credits of burstable instances, see the "CPU credits" section of Overview.

In some scenarios such as the following scenarios, you may need to start your instances multiple times within a short period of time. To ensure that the instances can be started and provide services, we recommend that you disable economical mode.

Enable economical mode for your entire account

This section describes how to enable economical mode for all instances in all regions within your account. After you enable economical mode for your entire account, you can still set the stop mode for individual instances when you stop the instances. For more information, see the Set the stop mode for a single instance section of this topic.

  1. Log on to the ECS console.

  2. In the Overview section of the Overview page, click Custom Settings.

    VPC内实例停机不收费-用户设置
  3. Turn on Economical Mode.

  4. In the message that appears, read the notes and click OK in the lower part.

  5. Click OK.

Disable economical mode for your entire account

This section describes how to disable economical mode for all instances in all regions within your account. After you disable economical mode for your entire account, you can still set the stop mode for individual instances when you stop the instances. For more information, see the Set the stop mode for a single instance section of this topic.

If an instance is stopped in economical mode, the computing resources (vCPUs and memory) and auto-assigned public IP address of the instance are recycled. Even if you disable economical mode, no computing resources incur charges for the instance. The instance is re-allocated computing resources and may have a different public IP address when the instance is restarted.

  1. Log on to the ECS console.

  2. In the Overview section of the Overview page, click Custom Settings.

    VPC内实例停机不收费-用户设置
  3. Turn off Economical Mode.

  4. In the message that appears, read the notes and click OK.

  5. Click OK.

Set the stop mode for a single instance

After you turn on or off Economical Mode, you can still set the stop mode for individual instances when you stop the instances. For more information, see Stop an instance.

normal-stop

View the stop mode of an instance

After a pay-as-you-go instance is stopped, you can check whether economical mode is triggered for the instance in the ECS console.

On the Instances page, find the stopped instance for which you want to check the stop mode and check the stop mode in the Status column.

  • Standard Mode indicates that economical mode is not triggered.

  • Economical Mode indicates that economical mode is triggered.

Note

After you select Economical Mode to stop an instance, the instance may be in Standard Mode. This is because the instance is being stopped. We recommend that you check again later.

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FAQ

References

You can use the scheduled startup and shutdown feature of Operation Orchestration Service (OOS) to batch manage the startup and shutdown time of multiple ECS instances. You can use the feature together with economical mode to reduce costs. For more information, see Scheduled startup and shutdown.