Managing Google Cloud VM instances effectively can save you money and help you optimize resources. Let’s break down what happens when you stop, start, suspend, resume, delete and reset a VM in Google Cloud.
🔍 What Do You Lose When You Stop a VM?
When you stop a VM instance
- The External/Public IP is released
- On the next start, the VM will be assigned a different Public IP (unless you have a static IP reserved)
📦 What Does the VM Retain?
Even when stopped, your VM will retain
- Persistent disks (data is safe)
- Internal IP address
- MAC address
🛑 When Should You Stop a VM?
Stopping a VM is useful when
- You want to save costs during idle periods
- You need to change the VM’s machine type (CPU, memory, etc.)
- You want to add or remove disks
💰 Billing Considerations
- Stopped (TERMINATED) VMs are not charged for compute usage
- You will still be charged for:
Persistent disks
Static external IP addresses (if reserved)
💤 Suspend and Resume a VM
🔹 What Happens When You Suspend a VM?
- OS memory, device state, and application state are preserved.
- VM memory is moved from RAM to storage.
- When resumed, the memory is moved back into RAM, restoring the VM to its previous running state.
🔹 Key Facts
- You can suspend a VM for up to 60 days before it’s automatically stopped.
- VMs with more than 120 GB memory cannot be suspended.
- Most operating systems support suspend/resume; some do not.
🔹 Use Cases
- Dev & Test environments that don’t run after business hours but need to retain application state.
- Applications with long initialization times that would be inconvenient to restart from scratch.
🔹 Pricing Considerations
You pay for
- Storage needed to hold VM memory
- Persistent disks attached to the VM
- Any static IPs assigned to the VM
Perform VM Action - Suspend and Resume
- Go to VM Instances -> demo1-vm -> Actions -> Suspend
- We should see suspend action is success ☑️
- Go to VM Instances -> demo1-vm -> Actions -> Start / Resume
- Exteral IP before and after "suspend and resume" action will vary (Its a Ephemeral IP Address - NOT STATIC)
🔄 Reset and Delete a VM
🔹 Reset VM Instance
- Works like a hard reset on a physical computer.
- Wipes memory and resets the VM instantly.
- No clean shutdown — the guest OS is not given time to stop gracefully.
- VM remains in RUNNING state during the reset.
Perform VM Action - Reset
- Go to VM Instances -> demo1-vm -> Actions -> Reset
- Just memory wipes, any data in system memory will be reset
# Access Webserver Pages
http://<external-ip-of-vm>
Observation:
1. Application should be accessible
🔹 Delete VM Instance
- Completely removes the VM and associated resources from your project.
- Use when you no longer need the instance at all.
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