If economical mode is enabled and an Elastic Compute Service (ECS) instance is stopped under the trigger conditions described in this topic, some resources of the instance are recycled to reduce instance costs and no longer incur charges.

Conditions for enabling economical mode

Note By default, economical mode is disabled. You can enable economical mode globally in your account or for a single instance. For more information, see the Enable economical mode globally in your account or Set the stop mode for a single instance section of this topic.

ECS instances that meet the following conditions support economical mode:

  • The instances reside in virtual private clouds (VPCs).

    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 instances are pay-as-you-go or preemptible instances.

    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 families are not equipped with local storage.

    Instance families that are equipped with local storage do not support economical mode, such as big data and local SSD instance families. For more information, see the Local storage (GiB) column in Instance family.

  • The instance families are 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 more information, see the Persistent memory (GiB) column in Instance family.

You can enable or disable economical mode. For more information, see Enable economical mode globally in your account and Disable economical mode globally in your account.

Resources

You can enable economical mode to recycle some resources to reduce costs while retaining instances.
Warning Economical mode may cause risks to instances. For more information, see the Risks section of this topic.
  • When ECS instances are stopped in economical mode, their resources that support economical mode are recycled and no longer incur charges. ECS resources that support economical mode include the following ones:
    • Computing resources including vCPUs and memory. The GPUs, FPGAs and NPUs of heterogeneous computing instances also support economical mode and can be recycled when the instances are stopped.
    • Public IP addresses and public bandwidth.
  • When ECS instances are stopped in economical mode, their resources that do not support economical mode are retained and continue to be billed on a pay-as-you-go basis in the same manner as before. ECS resources that do not support economical mode include but are not limited to the following ones:
    • System disks
    • Data disks attached to instances
    • Elastic IP addresses (EIPs) and EIP bandwidth
    • Images
    • Snapshots

Conditions for triggering economical mode

After economical mode is enabled, it can be triggered only for pay-as-you-go or preemptible instances that are stopped due to one of the following factors:
  • 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 following scenarios:
  • 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 economical mode is triggered while an instance is stopped, the computing resources (vCPUs and memory) and 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 start due to insufficient resources. If this occurs, you can 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.
    Note Before you stop an instance in economical mode, we recommend that you restart the instance to ensure that sufficient resources are available for the instance to start. This prevents service interruptions caused by instance startup failures.
  • After the public IP address is recycled, a new public IP address is assigned when the instance is started again and may be different from the previous recycled address. The private IP address remains unchanged.
    Note If your application depends on a specific public IP address, we recommend that you disable economical mode or convert the public IP address into an EIP. For more information, see Disable economical mode globally in your account or Convert the public IP address of a VPC-type instance to an EIP.
  • If the instance is a burstable instance, the instance stops earning CPU credits and its current CPU credit balance is cleared. When you start the instance, the instance starts to earn CPU credits again. For more information about CPU credits of burstable instances, see CPU credits.
In some cases, you may need to start your instances multiple times within a short period of time. We recommend that you disable economical mode to ensure that the instances can be started and provide services. You can disable economical in the following scenarios:
For an instance that was stopped due to an overdue payment, if you settle the overdue payment within the specified period of time and reactivate the instance, the economical mode state determines whether the public IP address is retained.
  • If economical mode is enabled, it is triggered while the instance is stopped due to an overdue payment. The computing resources (vCPUs and memory) and public IP address of the instance are automatically released. The instance may have a different public IP address when you reactivate it.
  • If economical mode is disabled, the billing of the instance stops when the instance is stopped due to an overdue payment. The public IP address is retained and remains unchanged when you reactivate the instance.
Note If all three attempts to deduct fees fail, the instance is stopped. For information about the state changes of resources when payments become overdue, see Pay-as-you-go.

Enable economical mode globally in your account

This section describes how to enable economical mode for all instances within all regions in your account. After you enable economical mode globally in your account, you must still set the stop mode for instances when you stop them. 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 Common Features section of the Overview page, click Custom Settings.
    Economical Mode in the Custom Settings dialog box
  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 globally in your account

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

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

  1. Log on to the ECS console.
  2. In the Common Features section of the Overview page, click Custom Settings.
    Economical Mode in the Custom Settings dialog box
  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 enable or disable economical mode globally in your account, you must still set the stop mode for an instance when you stop the instance. For more information, see Stop an instance.

normal-stop

View the stop mode

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, click the view icon.In the Column Filters dialog box, select Stop Mode and click OK. Then, you can view the stop mode of the stopped instance in the instance list.
  • Standard Mode indicates that economical mode is not triggered.
  • Economical Mode indicates that economical mode is triggered.
view-stop-mode

FAQ

References

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