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Pause, resume, stop, start, restore and delete a machine from the CLI, the SDKs or the API. The CLI and SDK calls wait until the change is done. An API call returns an operation at once: see How it works. API paths take the machine ID (m_...). The CLI and the SDKs also take its name.

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Pause a machine

Pause keeps memory and running processes, so a resume picks up where you left off. A machine also pauses by itself when it is idle. To change when, see Auto-pause.
A paused machine cannot be stopped. Resume or delete it. The TypeScript SDK’s stop() starts a paused machine first, then stops it.

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Resume a paused machine

If a resume cannot bring memory back, the machine starts fresh with its files.

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Stop a machine

Stop shuts the machine down. Files stay. Processes end, and the next start boots fresh.

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Start a stopped machine

A machine you paused or stopped stays offline until you resume or start it. A machine that paused itself when idle wakes on use. See Auto-pause and max-run.

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Restart a stuck machine

restart (or recover) power-cycles a machine that stopped answering. The root disk and /data are kept. Processes and memory are not.
Stop asks the guest to power off, then sends Ctrl+Alt+Del. Once the timeout runs out (60 seconds, or --timeout up to 10 minutes), it kills the VM, so a hung guest comes back too. Writes the guest had not flushed can be lost. A machine stuck in starting with no start in progress cannot be power-cycled.

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Restore a snapshot in place

Restore puts the machine’s disks back to a snapshot’s. The machine keeps its ID, name, hostname, public port URLs, and ssh-config block.
Everything on the root disk and /data since the snapshot is gone, running programs included. The SSH host keys are new afterwards.
Restore stops a running machine first, then boots it from the snapshot. To leave it stopped, add --stopped (Python: stopped=True, API: "desiredState": "stopped"). To start a new machine from a snapshot instead, see Snapshots.

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Delete a machine

Delete removes the machine and its files. Snapshots are kept.

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Reboot or shut down from inside the machine

Machines created from a template older than this behavior stop on a reboot too. A machine that reboots more than 5 times in 10 minutes is left stopped.

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How it works

Every change to a machine is an operation, and a machine runs at most one at a time. The dashboard shows operations in the operations tray, and these states: Creating, Starting, Running, Stopping, Stopped, Pausing, Paused, Resuming, Deleting, Failed. Over the API, lifecycle calls answer 202 Accepted with an operation. Follow the operation with Get an operation until it is succeeded or failed, as API overview describes. The CLI and the SDKs do this for you.

Sizes and create options

vCPUs, memory, disk, templates, and every create field.

Storage and retention

What is kept, for how long, and the archive and delete deadlines.