Stopping and Starting the Instances in an Instance Pool

You can stop and start the instances in an instance pool as needed to update software or resolve error conditions.

Stopping or Restarting an Instance From Within the Instance

In addition to using the API and Console, you can stop and restart instances using the commands available in the operating system when you are logged in to the instance. Stopping an instance using the instance's OS does not stop billing for that instance. If you stop the instances in an instance pool this way, be sure to also stop the instance pool from the Console or API.

Required IAM Policy

To use Oracle Cloud Infrastructure, you must be given the required type of access in a policy written by an administrator, whether you're using the Console or the REST API with an SDK, CLI, or other tool. If you try to perform an action and get a message that you don’t have permission or are unauthorized, confirm with your administrator the type of access you've been granted and which compartment you should work in.

For administrators: For a typical policy that gives access to instance pools and instance configurations, see Let users manage Compute instance configurations, instance pools, and cluster networks.

If you're new to policies, see Getting Started with Policies and Common Policies. For reference material about writing policies for instances, cloud networks, or other Core Services API resources, see Details for the Core Services.

Resource Billing for Stopped Instances

For both VM and bare metal instances, billing depends on the shape that you use to create the instance:

Standard shapes: Stopping an instance pool pauses billing. However, stopped instances continue to count toward your service limits.
Dense I/O shapes: Billing continues for stopped instance pools because of the attached NVMe storage, and related resources continue to count toward your service limits. To halt billing and remove related resources from your service limits, you must terminate the instance pool.
GPU shapes: Billing continues for stopped instance pools, and related resources continue to count toward your service limits. To halt billing and remove related resources from your service limits, you must terminate the instance pool.
HPC shapes: Billing continues for stopped instance pools because of the attached NVMe storage, and related resources continue to count toward your service limits. To halt billing and remove related resources from your service limits, you must terminate the instance pool.

Stopping an instance using the instance's OS does not stop billing for that instance. If you stop the instances in an instance pool this way, be sure to also stop the instance pool from the Console or API.

For more information about how instances running Microsoft Windows Server are billed when they are stopped, see How am I charged for Windows Server on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure?.

Using the Console

Open the navigation menu. Under Core Infrastructure, go to Compute and click Instance Pools.
Click the instance pool that contains the instances that you want to stop or start.
Click one of the following actions:
- Start: Starts all instances in the instance pool.
- Stop: Shuts down all instances in the instance pool.
- Reboot: Gracefully reboots all instances in the instance pool by sending a shutdown command to the operating system, and then powers the instances back on.

Using the API

For information about using the API and signing requests, see REST APIs and Security Credentials. For information about SDKs, see Software Development Kits and Command Line Interface.

To manage the lifecycle state of the instances in an instance pool, use these operations: