Google Cloud VM instance can't start and cannot be moved because of terminated state

Question

I wanted to resize RAM and CPU of my machine, so I stopped the VM instance and when I tried to start it I got an error:

The zone 'projects/freesarkarijobalerts/zones/asia-south1-a' does not have enough resources available to fulfill the request. Try a different zone, or try again later.`

Here you can see the screenshot.

I've tried to start VM instance today, but result was the same and I got an error message again:

The zone 'projects/freesarkarijobalerts/zones/asia-south1-a' does not have enough resources available to fulfill the request. Try a different zone, or try again later.`

Then I tried to move my instance to different region, but I got an error message:

sarkarijobalerts123@cloudshell:~ (freesarkarijobalerts)$ gcloud compute instances move wordpress-2-vm --zone=asia-south1-a --destination-zone=asia-south1-b
Moving gce instance wordpress-2-vm...failed.
ERROR: (gcloud.compute.instances.move) Instance cannot be moved while in state: TERMINATED

My website is DOWN for a couple of days, please help me.

Answer 1

The standard procedure is to create a snapshot out of the stopped VM instance [1] and then create a new one in another zone [2].

[1] https://cloud.google.com/compute/docs/disks/create-snapshots

[2] https://cloud.google.com/compute/docs/disks/restore-and-delete-snapshots#restore_a_snapshot_of_a_persistent_disk_to_a_new_disk

Answer 2

Let's have a look at the cause of this issue:

1. When you stop an instance it releases some resources like vCPU and memory.

2. When you start an instance it requests resources like vCPU and memory back and if there's not enough resources available in the zone you'll get an error message:

   Error: The zone 'projects/freesarkarijobalerts/zones/asia-south1-a' does not have enough resources available to fulfill the request. Try a different zone, or try again later.
   

   more information available in the documentation:

   If you receive a resource error (such as ZONE_RESOURCE_POOL_EXHAUSTED or ZONE_RESOURCE_POOL_EXHAUSTED_WITH_DETAILS) when requesting new resources, it means that the zone cannot currently accommodate your request. This error is due to Compute Engine resource obtainability, and is not due to your Compute Engine quota.

3. Resource availability are depending from users requests and therefore are dynamic.

There are a few ways to solve your issue:

1. Move your instance to another zone by following instructions.
2. Wait for a while and try to start your VM instance again.
3. Reserve resources for your VM by following documentation to avoid such issue in future:

Create reservations for Virtual Machine (VM) instances in a specific zone, using custom or predefined machine types, with or without additional GPUs or local SSDs, to ensure resources are available for your workloads when you need them. After you create a reservation, you begin paying for the reserved resources immediately, and they remain available for your project to use indefinitely, until the reservation is deleted.