Managing Google Cloud VM instances effectively can save you money and help you optimize resources. Let’s break down what happens when you stop, start, suspend, resume, delete and reset a VM in Google Cloud.

🔍 What Do You Lose When You Stop a VM?

When you stop a VM instance

• The External/Public IP is released
• On the next start, the VM will be assigned a different Public IP (unless you have a static IP reserved)

📦 What Does the VM Retain?

Even when stopped, your VM will retain

• Persistent disks (data is safe)
• Internal IP address
• MAC address

🛑 When Should You Stop a VM?

Stopping a VM is useful when

• You want to save costs during idle periods
• You need to change the VM’s machine type (CPU, memory, etc.)
• You want to add or remove disks

💰 Billing Considerations

• Stopped (TERMINATED) VMs are not charged for compute usage
• You will still be charged for:

Persistent disks
Static external IP addresses (if reserved)

💤 Suspend and Resume a VM

🔹 What Happens When You Suspend a VM?

• OS memory, device state, and application state are preserved.
• VM memory is moved from RAM to storage.
• When resumed, the memory is moved back into RAM, restoring the VM to its previous running state.

🔹 Key Facts

• You can suspend a VM for up to 60 days before it’s automatically stopped.
• VMs with more than 120 GB memory cannot be suspended.
• Most operating systems support suspend/resume; some do not.

🔹 Use Cases

• Dev & Test environments that don’t run after business hours but need to retain application state.
• Applications with long initialization times that would be inconvenient to restart from scratch.

🔹 Pricing Considerations

You pay for

• Storage needed to hold VM memory
• Persistent disks attached to the VM
• Any static IPs assigned to the VM

Perform VM Action - Suspend and Resume

• Go to VM Instances -> demo1-vm -> Actions -> Suspend
• We should see suspend action is success ☑️
• Go to VM Instances -> demo1-vm -> Actions -> Start / Resume
• Exteral IP before and after "suspend and resume" action will vary (Its a Ephemeral IP Address - NOT STATIC)

🔄 Reset and Delete a VM

🔹 Reset VM Instance

• Works like a hard reset on a physical computer.
• Wipes memory and resets the VM instantly.
• No clean shutdown — the guest OS is not given time to stop gracefully.
• VM remains in RUNNING state during the reset.

Perform VM Action - Reset

• Go to VM Instances -> demo1-vm -> Actions -> Reset
• Just memory wipes, any data in system memory will be reset

# Access Webserver Pages
http://<external-ip-of-vm>
Observation:
1. Application should be accessible

🔹 Delete VM Instance

• Completely removes the VM and associated resources from your project.
• Use when you no longer need the instance at all.