If you want to use an Elastic Compute Service (ECS) subscription instance that has a relatively short subscription duration (such as three months) for a long period of time, we recommend that you enable auto-renewal for the instance to reduce administrative costs, ensure business continuity, and prevent data loss caused by the stop of the instance on expiration.
Prerequisites
To enable auto-renewal for instances, make sure that the following requirements are met:
Subscription instances are created. The instances have not expired or have expired for up to 14 days.
The balance of your account, including credit balance and vouchers, is sufficient to cover the instance renewal fees.
Auto-renewal rules
Deduction times
Alibaba Cloud first attempts to deduct the renewal fee for an instance three days before the instance expires. If this deduction attempt fails due to insufficient account balance, Alibaba Cloud attempts to deduct the fee up to four times on the following days until all the allowed deduction attempts fail or until the payment is completed: the day before the instance expires (T-1), the day when the instance expires (T), the seventh day after the instance expires (T+6), and the fifteenth day after the instance expires (T+14).
NoteIf the fee deduction fails, Alibaba Cloud notifies you by email. To prevent instances from being unexpectedly stopped, check whether you received the email.
Renewal cycle
Instances are automatically renewed based on the renewal duration that you specify when you enable auto-renewal. For example, if you select three months, your instance is automatically renewed for three months each time before the instance expires.
Manual renewal after auto-renewal is enabled
If you manually renew an instance after you enable auto-renewal for the instance, the instance is automatically renewed based on the new expiration date.
For information about renewal rules, see Renewal guide for the international site (alibabacloud.com).
Enable auto-renewal
Enable auto-renewal when you create instances
You can enable auto-renewal on the instance buy page when you create instances.
After you enable auto-renewal on the instance buy page, an auto-renewal cycle (also known as renewal duration) is automatically configured for the instances. This default auto-renewal cycle varies based on the subscription duration of the instances. For example, the default auto-renewal cycle of a monthly subscription instance is one month. If the default auto-renewal cycle does not meet your business requirements, you can specify a different renewal cycle. For more information, see the Disable auto-renewal or modify auto-renewal settings section of this topic.
Enable auto-renewal for existing instances
You can enable auto-renewal for one or more existing instances at the same time.
Log on to the ECS console.
In the left-side navigation pane, choose .
In the upper-left corner of the top navigation bar, select a region.
Open the Configure Auto-renewal dialog box.
To disable auto-renewal or modify auto-renewal settings for a single instance, find the instance and choose More > Instance Settings > Configure Auto-renewal in the Actions column.
To enable auto-renewal for multiple instances, select the instances and choose More > Instance Settings > Configure Auto-renewal in the lower part of the Instances page.
Turn on Auto-renewal, specify the Renewal Duration parameter, and then click OK.
When the instances expire and your Alibaba Cloud account has sufficient balance, fees are automatically deducted from your account balance to renew the instances for the next duration.
Disable auto-renewal or modify auto-renewal settings
Log on to the ECS console.
In the left-side navigation pane, choose .
In the upper-left corner of the top navigation bar, select a region.
Open the Configure Auto-renewal dialog box.
To disable auto-renewal or modify auto-renewal settings for a single instance, find the instance and choose More > Instance Settings > Configure Auto-renewal in the Actions column.
To disable auto-renewal or modify auto-renewal settings for multiple instances, select the instances and choose More > Instance Settings > Configure Auto-renewal in the lower part of the Instances page.
Disable auto-renewal or modify auto-renewal settings.
To disable auto-renewal, turn off Auto-renewal and click OK.
To change the auto-renewal duration, select a different duration from the Renewal Duration drop-down list and click OK.
Check the auto-renewal status of an instance
To check whether auto-renewal is enabled for an instance and the auto-renewal duration of the instance, perform the following operations:
Log on to the ECS console.
In the left-side navigation pane, choose .
In the upper-left corner of the top navigation bar, select a region.
On the Instances page, find the instance that you want to view and click the instance ID.
On the Instance Details tab, find the Billing Information section and check the Auto-renewal parameter.
If auto-renewal is enabled for the instance, Auto-renewal <X>Weeks/<X>Months/<X>Years is displayed. Example: Auto-renewal 1Months.
If auto-renewal is not enabled for the instance, Manual Renewal or Not Renewal is displayed.
