When your Alibaba Cloud account has overdue payments, all pay-as-you-go ApsaraDB RDS instances in your account become overdue. Subscription RDS instances are not affected.
Overdue payments may cause your RDS instances to be stopped and eventually released. Add funds to your account as soon as possible to avoid service interruptions.
What happens to your instances
With an overdue account, you cannot release RDS instances until you add sufficient funds.
The following describes the status of pay-as-you-go RDS instances after a payment becomes overdue:
Day 1 to 15 — Instances run as normal. Check your account balance and add funds to prevent the instances from being stopped.
Day 16 to 30 — Instances are stopped and billing pauses. Add funds to resume the instances immediately.
From day 31 — Instances are released and moved to the recycle bin. Released instances are retained in the recycle bin for 8 days, along with their backup files. During this window, you can rebuild the instance from the recycle bin to restore it to a new instance. For more information, see Use the recycle bin feature of an ApsaraDB RDS for PostgreSQL instance.
ImportantSpecific instances are not moved to the recycle bin. For more information, see the recycle bin feature documentation.
Day 9 after release — Instances are permanently deleted. Backup files are deleted and the instance is permanently deleted. The instance cannot be rebuilt and the data is unrecoverable.
Cross-region backup exception
If cross-region backup is enabled for an instance and the cross-region backup retention period has not elapsed, backup files are retained after the instance is released — based on the configured backup policies. For more information, see Use the cross-region backup feature of an ApsaraDB RDS for PostgreSQL instance.
In this case, you cannot rebuild the instance. Data is permanently deleted after the backup files are deleted.
FAQ
Does an overdue payment affect my subscription (prepaid) RDS instances?
No. Overdue payments only affect pay-as-you-go RDS instances. Subscription instances are billed upfront and continue running regardless of account balance.
Can I recover my instance after it is deleted from the recycle bin?
No. Once the 8-day retention period in the recycle bin expires, the instance and its backup files are permanently deleted and cannot be recovered. Rebuild the instance from the recycle bin before day 9 after release.
Instance status for overdue payments
You cannot manually release instances while your Alibaba Cloud account has an overdue payment.
Instance status | Operation |
From day 1 to day 15 after the payment becomes overdue, the instance runs normally. The instance status is Running. |
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From day 16 to day 30 after the payment becomes overdue, the instance is suspended and billing stops. The instance is set to the Locked state. | |
On the 31st day after the payment becomes overdue, Alibaba Cloud releases the instance. After the instance is released, it is kept in the recycle bin for 8 days. Its backups are also retained for 8 days. | During the 8-day retention period after the instance is released, you can rebuild and recover the instance from the recycle bin. This restores the data from the original instance to a new instance. For more information, see , , , and , Recycle bin for MySQL instances, Recycle bin for SQL Server instances, Recycle bin for PostgreSQL instances, and Recycle bin for MariaDB instances. Important Some instances are not moved to the recycle bin. For more information, see the Recycle bin tutorials. |
On the 9th day after the instance is released, the instance is deleted from the recycle bin and its backups are no longer retained (with the following exceptions). Note After an instance is released, backups for instances that meet the following conditions are retained based on the configured backup policy:
| At this point, you cannot rebuild or recover the instance. After the instance backups are deleted, the data is permanently deleted and cannot be recovered. |
