This document describes common issues or errors when suspending or resuming a virtual machine (VM) instance.
You can suspend a VM temporarily so that its memory moves to storage, and the instance is preserved until you come back and resume it at a later time. Learn more about suspending and resuming a VM.
Excessive suspension time
In some cases, it might take a while for the VM to become suspended once you have
made the suspend request. Because the guest operating system's memory is saved on
a persistent disk, it might take several minutes for a VM to transition to
SUSPENDED state.
For VMs that are suspended with --discard-local-ssd=False flag, suspension could take significantly longer as the SSD contents have to be copied
to persistent disk. For more information, see the Local SSD documentation.
VM suspension errors
If you could not suspend a VM, it could be due to one of the following reasons.
Invalid VM state
You can only suspend a VM in RUNNING state. If you attempt to suspend a VM
in another state, the system returns an error.
Error messages:
UNSUPPORTED_OPERATION
You cannot suspend an instance that is stopped or terminated.
You cannot suspend an instance that is being repaired.
You cannot suspend an already suspended instance.
Resolution:
Only a VM in the RUNNING state can be suspended. Please wait and try again later
if the instance is being repaired, or start the VM if it is currently stopped.
Invalid VM configurations
Confidential VM is not supported
You cannot suspend a Confidential VM.
Error messages:
UNSUPPORTED_OPERATION
Resolution
You can recreate the VM as a regular VM or, alternatively, stop and start the VM instead.
Too much memory
You cannot suspend VMs with more than 208GB of memory.
Error messages:
UNSUPPORTED_OPERATION
Suspend is not supported on Instances with more than 208GB memory.
Resolution:
You can change the machine type of the VM to reduce its memory or, alternatively, stop and start the VM instead.
Suspend with Local SSD only supports up to 16 Local SSD disks
Error messages:
INVALID_USAGE
Suspend with Local SSD feature is not available for this project.
Resolution
To suspend a VM with more than 16 local SSD attached, you must discard the local SSD
contents while suspending the VM with the --discard-local-ssd flag.
You cannot suspend a VM with a GPU
Error messages:
UNSUPPORTED_OPERATION
Suspend is not supported on GPU Instances. You may delete and recreate the instances without GPU.
Resolution:
Recreate the VM without a GPU or stop and start the VM instance.
You can not suspend a Windows VM when the display timeout is set or the sleep button is disabled
A Windows VM that has power policy set to high performance and display timeout set to a value greater than 0 may turn off the display after the timeout.
When you send suspend requests to VMs where the display has turned off, the suspend request restarts the display instead of suspending the VM.
Resolution:
To resolve this issue, do the following:
Disable the display timeout using the following command:
powercfg /change monitor-timeout-ac 0
Enable the sleep button using the following command:
powercfg -setacvalueindex SCHEME_CURRENT 4f971e89-eebd-4455-a8de-9e59040e7347 96996bc0-ad50-47ec-923b-6f41874dd9eb 1
There was a guest timeout
This error occurs when the guest operating system does not respond to the ACPI S3 signal within 3 minutes. The OS must be able to handle the ACPI S3 signal to initiate a suspend of the VM. Some operating systems do not support this functionality.
Error messages:
UNSUPPORTED_OPERATION
Instance suspend failed due to guest timeout.
Resolution:
Review the OS compatibility table to determine whether an OS supports suspend and resume. Alternatively, you can stop and start the instance instead, although the instance will lose guest OS memory, device state, and application state when stopped.
There is not enough persistent disk quota
Error messages:
QUOTA_EXCEEDED
Quota 'DISKS_TOTAL_GB' exceeded. Limit: NUMBER_OF_DISKS in region REGION.
Resolution:
Make sure your project and region in which you're suspending the instance has enough persistent disk quota. See Resource quotas for more information.
The VM was preempted
The VM was preempted before you could suspend it.
Error messages:
FAILED_WITH_INSTANCE_PREEMPTED
You cannot suspend an instance that is preempted.
Resolution:
No action is necessary if you do not want to suspend this VM. If you do, you can restart the VM and immediately suspend it.
The VM could not be suspended for unknown reasons
Error messages:
FAILED_WITH_INSTANCE_RUNNING
FAILED_WITH_INSTANCE_RUNNING
Suspend failed with instance in state RUNNING.
Resolution:
Please try to suspend the VM again at a later time.