If the billing method of a disk does not meet your business requirements, you can change the billing method of the disk. The billing methods of data disks attached to subscription Elastic Compute Service (ECS) instances can be changed separately. The billing methods of data disks attached to pay-as-you-go ECS instances and system disks can only be changed together with the billing methods of the instances. This topic describes how to change the billing method of a disk between pay-as-you-go and subscription on an ECS instance.
Prerequisites
The disk is attached to an instance, and the instance is in the Running or Stopped state.
Background information
Usage notes
Alibaba Cloud calculates whether the billing method of your Elastic Compute Service (ECS) instance can be changed based on your usage of the instance. You can perform the operations that are described in this topic to check whether an entry point for changing the billing method of your instance exists in the ECS console. If the entry point does not exist, the billing method of your instance cannot be changed.
You must wait at least 5 minutes between two consecutive billing method changes.
You cannot change the billing method of disks for which the multi-attach feature is enabled. For more information, see Enable multi-attach.
Methods
Instance billing method | Disk billing method | Change the billing method of a disk | Charged |
Subscription | System disk: subscription | You cannot separately change the billing method of the system disk. To change the billing method of the system disk, change the billing method of the instance to which the disk is attached. For more information, see Change the billing method of an instance from subscription to pay-as-you-go. | No |
Data disk: subscription | For more information, see the Change the billing method from subscription to pay-as-you-go section of this topic. | No | |
Data disk: pay-as-you-go | For more information, see the Switch from pay-as-you-go to subscription section of this topic. | Yes | |
Pay-as-you-go | System disk: pay-as-you-go | You cannot separately change the billing method of the system disk or a data disk. To change the billing method of the disk, change the billing method of the instance to which the disk is attached. For more information, see Change the billing method of an instance from pay-as-you-go to subscription. | Yes |
Data disk: pay-as-you-go |
Change the billing method from subscription to pay-as-you-go
The following section describes how to change the billing method of a data disk that is attached to a subscription instance from subscription to pay-as-you-go.
You may receive a refund when you use the configuration downgrade feature to change the billing method of a data disk from subscription to pay-as-you-go. The refund amount is the difference between the price of the new configurations and the remaining price of the original configurations before the configuration downgrade.
Log on to the ECS console.
Use one of the following methods to change the billing method of a disk:
To change the billing method of multiple data disks of an instance, we recommend that you go to the Instance page.
In the left-side navigation pane, choose .
In the top navigation bar, select the region and resource group to which the resource belongs.
Find the instance and choose
> Upgrade/Downgrade > Downgrade in the Actions column. On the Downgrade page, click the Disk Charge Type tab.
Select the subscription data disks for which you want to change the billing method.
The billing method of the selected data disks changes from subscription to pay-as-you-go.
To change the billing method of a specific data disk, we recommend that you go to the Disks page.
In the left-side navigation pane, choose .
In the top navigation bar, select the region and resource group to which the resource belongs.
Find the data disk whose billing method you want to change and choose
> Switch to Pay-as-you-go in the Actions column. On the Disk Charge Type tab, check the selected disk.
Select ECS Service Terms and click Downgrade Now.
By default, if you release the instance to which the disk is attached after you change the billing method of the disk to pay-as-you-go, the disk is not released together with the instance. You can change the release settings of disks in the ECS console. For more information, see Release a disk.
Switch from pay-as-you-go to subscription
This section describes how to change a data disk of a subscription instance from pay-as-you-go to subscription.
Log on to the ECS console.
Use one of the following methods to change the billing method of a disk:
To change the billing method of multiple data disks of an instance, we recommend that you go to the Instance page.
In the left-side navigation pane, choose .
In the top navigation bar, select the region and resource group to which the resource belongs.
Find the instance and choose
> Upgrade/Downgrade > Upgrade in the Actions column. On the Upgrade page, select the pay-as-you-go data disks whose billing method you want to change in the Disk payment method section.
The billing method of the selected data disks changes from pay-as-you-go to subscription.
If you want to change the billing method of a specific data disk, we recommend that you perform the operations on the Disks page.
In the left-side navigation pane, choose .
In the top navigation bar, select the region and resource group to which the resource belongs.
Find the data disk whose billing method you want to change and choose
> Switch to Subscription in the Actions column. In the Disk payment method section, check the selected disk.
Read the upgrade instructions, select ECS Service Terms, and then click Create Order.
Complete the payment and confirm that the billing method of the disk is changed to subscription.
After you change the billing method of the disk to subscription, the disk cannot be detached.