This topic describes how to release an instance. You can choose to release the instance immediately or on a schedule.
Prerequisites
Only pay-as-you-go Elastic Compute Service (ECS) instances (including preemptible instances) and expired subscription instances can be released.
After an instance is released, its data is deleted and cannot be recovered. We recommend that you create snapshots to back up data before you release the instance. For more information, see Create a snapshot for a disk.
After an instance is released, snapshots and images manually created from the instance are not affected.
Background information
Subscription instances that have not expired cannot be released. If you want to release a subscription instance that has not expired, you must convert it into a pay-as-you-go instance first. For more information, see Change the billing method of an instance from subscription to pay-as-you-go.
You can manually release expired subscription instances. If you do not renew an expired instance within a specific period of time, the instance is automatically released.
If economical mode is disabled for a stopped pay-as-you-go instance, you continue to be charged for the instance until it is released.
You can enable release protection for a pay-as-you-go instance to prevent irreversible data loss caused by accidental release operations. For more information, see Enable and disable release protection for ECS instances.
If the Release Disk with Instance feature is disabled for a disk attached to an instance, the disk is automatically converted into a pay-as-you-go data disk and retained when the instance is released. For more information, see Release a disk.
If you want to release multiple ECS instances at a time, we recommend that you use public templates provided by Operation Orchestration Service (OOS) to batch release the instances. To batch release ECS instances, you can create an execution based on a public template and use different methods to specify one or more instances for the execution. For example, you can specify the IDs of the ECS instances for the execution. For more information, see Release multiple ECS instances at a time.
Procedure
You can manually release pay-as-you-go instances in the ECS console.
Log on to the ECS console.
In the left-side navigation pane, choose .
In the upper-left corner of the top navigation bar, select a region.
Release instances immediately or on a schedule.
Release instances immediately
Release one or more instances immediately.
To release a single instance immediately, find the instance and choose
> Instance Status > Release in the Actions column.
To release one or more instances immediately, display only pay-as-you-go instances by using the Billing Method column, select one or more pay-as-you-go instances, and then choose
> Release in the lower part of the page.
In the Release dialog box, select Release Now and click Next.
Confirm the instances and related resources that you want to release, select I am aware of the instances and their associated resources to be released and understand the data risks, and then click OK.
Release instances on a schedule
Release one or more instances on a schedule.
To release a single instance on a schedule, find the instance and choose
> Instance Status > Release in the Actions column. To release one or more instances on a schedule, display only pay-as-you-go instances by using the Billing Method column, select one or more pay-as-you-go instances, and then choose
> Release in the lower part of the page.
In the Release dialog box, select Release on Schedule, specify a release time, and then click Next.
Confirm the instances and related resources that you want to release, select I am aware of the instances and their associated resources to be released and understand the data risks, and then click OK.
After you specify the release time for an instance, you can click Cancel in the Billing Method column corresponding to the instance to cancel the release settings.
