Only pay-as-you-go Elastic Compute Service (ECS) instances (including preemptible instances) and expired subscription instances can be released. This topic describes how to release pay-as-you-go instances manually or automatically.
Prerequisites
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.
Note 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 or 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.
Manually release instances
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 top navigation bar, select a region.
- Release one or more pay-as-you-go instances at a time.
- To release a single pay-as-you-go instance, find the instance and choose Actions column.
- To release one or more pay-as-you-go instances at a time, click the Filter icon at
the top of the Billing Method column and select Pay-As-You-Go from the drop-down list. In the displayed list of
pay-as-you-go instances, select the instances that you want to release and then click
Release below the instance list.
- To release a single pay-as-you-go instance, find the instance and choose Actions column.
- In the Release dialog box, select Release Now.
- Click Next and then click OK.