Impacts of overdue payments on ECS resources and causes of and handling methods for overdue payments - Elastic Compute Service

This topic describes the impacts of overdue payments on Elastic Compute Service (ECS) instances or related resources and how to prevent and handle overdue payments. If payments in your account are overdue or about to become overdue, you can handle the payments by using the methods that are described in this topic to better manage resources and costs.

Causes

If you do not have sufficient funds in your Alibaba Cloud account, which include the account balance and vouchers, to complete a payment, the payment becomes overdue.

Impacts

Subscription ECS resources

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

Important

If a payment becomes overdue in your account and a pay-as-you-go disk is attached to an unexpired ECS instance, the system limits the disk performance to suspend services. If the payment remains overdue for 15 days, the system detaches and releases the disk. The disk may fail to be detached. If the disk fails to be detached, you are no longer charged for the disk but data that is stored on the disk may be lost. We recommend that you no longer use the disk.

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 ECS instance runs as expected.
If the fees for a pay-as-you-go ECS instance fail to be deducted on day T, the payment for the instance becomes overdue. Within 15 days after the payment becomes overdue, the ECS instance runs as expected. You can continue to use existing resources, but you cannot purchase resources, upgrade instance configurations, or renew resources. 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 ECS instance is stopped.

If all attempts to deduct the fees for a pay-as-you-go ECS instance fail, the instance is stopped on day T+15 and billing for the instance also stops. If you do not complete the overdue payment for more than 15 days after the ECS 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 ECS 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 ECS instance is stopped	More than 15 days after the ECS instance is stopped
Computing resources (vCPUs and memory)	The computing resources (vCPUs and memory) of the ECS instance are retained, but the instance stops providing services. After an ECS 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) of the ECS instance are released. Note If 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 disks are retained, but the disks become unavailable. Local disks and data that is stored on the disks are retained, but the disks become unavailable. Note After cloud disks or local disks become unavailable, the disks cannot process read/write requests as expected. As a result, the operation of the ECS instances to which the disks are attached is affected. For example, the read/write performance of applications may significantly decline, an extended period of time may be required to complete specific operations, or ECS 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 disks cannot be recovered. Note Data disks that are created together with pay-as-you-go ECS 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 disks cannot be recovered.
IP addresses	If the ECS instance is deployed in the classic network, the auto-assigned public IP address of the instance is retained. If the ECS instance is deployed in a virtual private cloud (VPC), the following rules apply: The auto-assigned public IP address of the ECS instance is retained. Important If the economical mode is enabled before the instance is stopped, the auto-assigned public IP address of the ECS instance may be recycled after the instance is stopped due to an overdue payment. When the ECS instance is restarted, the auto-assigned public IP address of the instance may change. The elastic IP address (EIP) that is associated with the ECS instance remains unchanged.	If the instance is deployed in the classic network, the auto-assigned public IP address of the ECS instance is released. If the ECS instance is deployed in a VPC, the following rules apply: The auto-assigned public IP address of the ECS instance is released. The EIP is disassociated from the ECS instance.
Snapshots	All snapshots and custom images are retained. You cannot manually or automatically create snapshots for disks on the ECS instance. As a result, you cannot create custom images from the ECS instance. If you add funds to your account to complete the overdue payment, automatic snapshot policies are automatically re-enabled for disks on the ECS instance. Important Billing for existing snapshots continues and fees are added to the overdue amount.	All snapshot resources are deleted, including snapshots that are not associated with custom images, snapshot-consistent groups, and snapshots that are associated with custom images. The snapshot data cannot be recovered. If a snapshot is associated with a custom image, the custom image is deleted when the snapshot is deleted, and cannot be recovered. If you add funds to your account to complete the overdue payment, automatic snapshot policies are automatically re-enabled for disks on the ECS instance. Important You are charged for snapshots until the snapshots are deleted. Delete the snapshots that you no longer need. After a custom image is deleted, you can continue to use the subscription ECS instances that are created from the image but you cannot re-initialize the system disks of the instances. 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.

Prevent and handle overdue payments

Complete overdue payments
If your account has overdue payments, your ECS instances may be stopped. Complete the overdue payments at the earliest opportunity to ensure service continuity. For more information, see How to pay an overdue bill?
Release resources that are no longer needed
If you no longer need an ECS resource, we recommend that you back up data and release the resource at the earliest opportunity.
Specify an alert threshold
Log on to the Expenses and Costs console and specify an alert threshold on the Account Overview page. If the credit balance in your account is lower than the alert threshold, the system notifies you by text message.
Specify an automatic release time
Specify an automatic release time for pay-as-you-go ECS instances to prevent unnecessary costs and overdue payments. For more information, see Release an instance.