Release a pay-as-you-go cluster - PolarDB - Alibaba Cloud - PolarDB

Usage notes

You cannot manually release subscription clusters.
You can manually release the following types of clusters:
- Pay-as-you-go clusters with a Status of Running.
  
  Note
  If the Status of your pay-as-you-go cluster is Locking, your Alibaba Cloud account has an overdue payment. You must top up your account to unlock the cluster and restore its normal operation. You can then release the cluster. For more information, see Expiration and overdue payments.
- Serverless clusters with a Status of Stopped.
This operation releases the entire cluster, including all its nodes. To release an individual read-only node, see Add or remove nodes.

Procedure

Log on to the PolarDB console. In the left-side navigation pane, click Clusters. Select the cluster's region and find the cluster.
In the Actions column, choose More > Release.

In the Release Cluster dialog box, select a backup retention policy and click OK.

Backup retention policy	Description
Take a final backup and retain all existing backup sets	When the cluster is released, all its existing backup sets are retained.
Take a final backup and retain only the final backup set	When the cluster is released, a final full backup is created, and only this new backup set is retained.
Delete all backup sets immediately	After the cluster is released, all its backup sets and logs are immediately deleted. Warning If you select this policy, you cannot restore the PolarDB cluster.

Note

If you select the Take a final backup and retain all existing backup sets or Take a final backup and retain only the final backup set policy, the system creates a final full backup to preserve your data before releasing the PolarDB cluster.
After the cluster is released, if you selected the Take a final backup and retain all existing backup sets or Take a final backup and retain only the final backup set policy, the following rules apply:
- For Enterprise Edition clusters, level-1 backup sets are automatically converted to level-2 backup sets and retained in the cluster recycle bin. Maintaining these backups incurs a small fee.
- For Standard Edition clusters, level-1 backup sets are retained in the cluster recycle bin. Maintaining these backups incurs a small fee.
You can delete the backups of a released cluster at any time to save costs.

FAQ

Pause or stop PolarDB clusters

If your PolarDB cluster has a fixed specification (the billing method is subscription or pay-as-you-go), you cannot pause or stop the cluster.
If your PolarDB cluster is a Serverless cluster, you can enable the auto-pause and resume feature for the Serverless cluster. After this feature is enabled, the cluster is automatically paused if it has no active connections for the duration specified in Detection Period for No-activity Suspension. While the cluster is paused, you are still charged for storage on a pay-as-you-go basis. The cluster automatically resumes when a new connection is established.

Backup charges after release

If you choose to retain backup sets when you release the cluster, you will continue to incur backup storage charges. You can delete these backups from the cluster recycle bin to save costs. For more information, see Delete a released cluster.

Cannot release a cluster

Before releasing a cluster, check for and stop any running tasks, such as data migration.

Related APIs

API	Description
DescribeDBClusters	Queries a list of PolarDB clusters.
DeleteDBCluster	Releases a pay-as-you-go PolarDB cluster.

PolarDB:Release a cluster