Google has made suspend/resume generally available. The features give you better control over Google Cloud resource consumption. Suspending a Google Compute Engine VM will save the state of your instance to disk allowing you to pick up where you left off when you resume it later. While your instance is in the SUSPENDED state, you no longer pay for cores or RAM, instead, you only pay for the storage costs of your instance memory. Other VM running costs such as OS licensing may also be reduced.
How it works
Suspending an instance sends an ACPI S3 signal to the instance’s operating system leading to two significant advantages compared to similar functionalities from other cloud providers.
- Broad compatibility with a wide selection of OS images without requiring you to use a cloud-specific OS image or install daemons. Undocumented and custom OS images that respond to the ACPI S3 signal may also work with Suspend.
- Storage is dynamically provisioned when Suspend is requested and is separate from the instance’s boot disk. This is in contrast to implementations in other clouds that require you to ensure that you have sufficient empty space in your boot disk to save the instance state which may increase the running costs of your VM. This also ensures that your suspended instance only consumes as much storage as it needs
