Elastic Compute Service:ECS overdue payments

Causes

If the credits in your Alibaba Cloud account, including the account balance and vouchers, are insufficient to cover the required payments, your account has overdue payments.

Impacts

Subscription ECS resources

You paid upfront for subscription resources and can use the resources as expected even if payments become overdue in your account. When your account has overdue payments, you cannot perform operations that generate fees, such as purchasing new instances, upgrading instance configurations, or renewing subscription resources.

Pay-as-you-go ECS resources

The system attempts to deduct the fees for pay-as-you-go ECS resources on the following days: on the payment due date (day T), the 7th day after the payment due date (day T+7), and the 14th day after the payment due date (day T+14).

• Within 15 days after the payment becomes overdue: The instance continues to run.

  If the fees for a pay-as-you-go instance fail to be deducted on day T, the payment for the instance becomes overdue, and enters the first grace period that lasts for 15 days. During the first grace period, your instance continues to run. You can continue to use existing resources, but you cannot purchase or renew resources, or upgrade instance configurations. The system attempts to deduct the fees on day T+7 and day T+14.

• More than 15 days after the payment becomes overdue: The instance is stopped.

  If all attempts to deduct the fees for the pay-as-you-go instance fail, the instance enters the second grace period on day T+15 and is stopped. Billing for the instance also stops. If the overdue payment is not handled for more than 15 days after the instance is stopped, the system releases, detaches, or disassociates the resources of the instance.

  The following table describes whether resources of a pay-as-you-go instance are retained or released in different periods of time after the instance is stopped due to an overdue payment.

  Resource	Within 15 days after the instance is stopped	More than 15 days after the instance is stopped
  Computing resources (vCPUs and memory)	The computing resources (vCPUs and memory) of the instance are retained, but the instance stops providing services. After an instance is stopped, you cannot connect to the instance or access the websites that are deployed on the instance. Service errors may also occur.	The computing resources (vCPUs and memory) are released. Note If your computing resources (vCPUs and memory) are released due to overdue payments, the system notifies you by email.
  Block storage devices	Cloud disks and data that is stored on the cloud disks are retained, but the cloud disks become unavailable. Local disks and data that is stored on the local disks are retained, but the local disks become unavailable. Note After cloud disks or local disks become unavailable, the disks cannot process read/write requests as expected. This adversely affects the operation of the instances to which the disks are attached. For example, the read/write performance of applications may significantly decline, an extended period of time may be required to complete specific operations, or instances that run specific operating system versions may unexpectedly shut down or fail to restart.	Cloud disks are released and data that is stored on the cloud disks cannot be recovered. Note Data disks that are created together with pay-as-you-go instances and pay-as-you-go data disks that are separately created on the Disks page in the ECS console are released. Local disks are released and data that is stored on the local disks cannot be recovered.
  IP addresses	If the instance is deployed in the classic network, the auto-assigned public IP address of the instance is retained. If the instance is deployed in a virtual private cloud (VPC), the following rules apply: The auto-assigned public IP address of the instance is retained. Important If the economical mode is enabled before the instance is stopped, the auto-assigned public IP address of the instance may be recycled after the instance is stopped due to an overdue payment. When the instance is restarted, the auto-assigned public IP address of the instance may change. The elastic IP address (EIP) that is associated with the instance remains unchanged.	If the instance is deployed in the classic network, the auto-assigned public IP address of the instance is released. If the instance is deployed in a VPC, the following rules apply: The auto-assigned public IP address of the instance is released. The EIP is disassociated from the instance.
  Snapshots	Retain all snapshots and custom images, but automatic snapshot creation will cease, and manual snapshot creation is not permitted. Operations to create custom images based on instances will fail due to the inability to create snapshots. If you recharge and pay the arrears within 15 days of the service suspension due to insufficient funds, the automatic snapshot policy will be re-enabled. Important The storage capacity used by the snapshots will continue to incur charges, so the amount owed will accumulate.	All snapshot resources owned by the user will be cleared and deleted (including snapshots, automatic snapshot policies, snapshot groups, and snapshots associated with custom images, etc.). Once cleared, the data cannot be recovered. If the snapshot is associated with a custom image, the associated custom image will also be deleted and cannot be recovered. Important Before snapshot data is cleared, billing will continue. If you confirm that you no longer need the snapshot service, be sure to delete the snapshot data. If there are subscription instances created based on custom images, the deletion of custom images will not affect the normal use of these subscription instances, but you will not be able to reinitialize the system disk. If you delete a custom image that is shared with other users, the other users can no longer view and use the image to create instances. The system disks of instances that use the image can no longer be re-initialized. If you delete a custom image that is published as a community image, the community image is also deleted and cannot be used to create instances. The system disks of instances that use the community image can no longer be re-initialized.