Google App Engine Flexible Environment creating too many VM instances

Question

I followed the Quickstart for Node.js in the App Engine Flexible Environment found at https://cloud.google.com/nodejs/getting-started/hello-world

I deployed the hello-world node.js app using gcloud preview app deploy. However, this simple command generated dozens of VM instances that I can see on the Developers Console. These instances are named gae-default-timestamp-xywz. I manually deleted the instances on the console, and minutes later new ones were back, only stopping to create new ones when my resources quota is reached.

Has anyone out there seen anything like this and know how to fix the issue? Thanks!

Answer 1

For the existing instances, you need to shut down first before deleting them. And to fix the new instance spinning, you can use max_num_instances: THE NUMBER_AS_YOU_DESIRE (ex. max_num_instances: 2 for auto scale) in your app.yaml file.