Troubleshooting Compute Engine instance suspension

Linux Windows

This document describes common issues or errors when suspending or resuminga Compute Engine instance, and how you can resolve them. To learn about howsuspending an instance works, seeSuspend operation.

Excessive suspension time

In some cases, it might take a while for Compute Engine to finishsuspending an instance after you requested to suspend the instance. BecauseCompute Engine saves the memory of the guest OS on a disk, it might takeseveral minutes to save the data and transition the instance state toSUSPENDED.

For Compute Engine instances that have Local SSD disks attached and thata user requested to suspend while preserving the instances' Local SSD data,suspension could take significantly longer as the Local SSD data has to becopied to a disk. For more information, see howstopping an instance that has Local SSD disks attached works.

Invalid instance state

You can only suspend a compute instance in theRUNNING state. If you attemptto suspend an instance in another state, then you encounter errors.

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: You can only suspend an instance in theRUNNING state. Basedon the state of the instance, do one of the following:

  • For an instance in theTERMINATED state,restart the instancebefore suspending it.

  • For an instance in theREPAIRING state, wait for Compute Engine tofinish repairing the instance, and then try suspending it again later.

Invalid instance configurations

The following sections outline issues with instance properties' configurations.

Confidential VM isn't supported

This error occurs when you try to suspend aConfidential VM.

Error messages:

UNSUPPORTED_OPERATION

Resolution: You can't suspend a Confidential VM. Instead, do one ofthe following:

Guest OS timeout

This error occurs when the guest OS doesn't respond to the ACPI S3 signal withinthree minutes.

Error messages:

UNSUPPORTED_OPERATION
Instance suspend failed due to guest timeout.

Resolution: The guest OS must be able to handle the ACPI S3 signal to beginthe suspend operation of the instance. To verify if the OS supports thisoperation, seeOperating system details.

If the OS doesn't support suspend operations, then do one of the following:

Insufficient disk quota

This error occurs when you have insufficient disk quota when you suspend aninstance.

Error messages:

QUOTA_EXCEEDED
Quota 'DISKS_TOTAL_GB' exceeded. Limit:NUMBER_OF_DISKS in regionREGION.

Resolution: When you suspend an instance, Compute Engine stores thedata for guest OS memory, device state, and application state in a disk. Thus,before suspending an instance, ensure that your project and region in which yourinstance is located have enough persistent disk quota. For more information, seeResource quotas.

Preserve Local SSD data for more than 32 Local SSD disks

This error occurs when you try to suspend an instance that has more than32 Local SSD disks attached and preservethe disks' data.

Error messages:

INVALID_USAGE
Suspend with Local SSD feature is not available for this project.

Resolution: You can't suspend an instance that has more than32 Local SSD disks attached and preservethe disks' data. Instead, do one of the following:

  • Copy the disk's data to an attached (mounted and formatted) disk, and thensuspend the instance while discarding Local SSD data.

  • Stop the instance.

Suspend an instance with a GPU

This error occurs when you try to suspend an instance that has one or more GPUsattached.

Error messages:

UNSUPPORTED_OPERATION
Suspend is not supported on GPU Instances. You may delete and recreate the instances without GPU.

Resolution: You can't suspend an instance that has GPUs attached. Instead,do one of the following:

The instance was preempted

This error occurs because Compute Engine preempted the instance that youtried to suspend.

Error messages:

FAILED_WITH_INSTANCE_PREEMPTED
You cannot suspend an instance that is preempted.

Resolution:Restart the Spot VM or preemptible instance,and then suspend it.

Too much memory

This error occurs when you try to suspend an instance with more than 208 GBof memory.

Error messages:

UNSUPPORTED_OPERATION
Suspend is not supported on Instances with more than 208 GB memory.

Resolution: You can't suspend instances with more than 208 GB ofmemory. Instead, do one of the following:

Unknown reasons

This error occurs when you try to suspend an instance, but an unknown erroroccurs.

Error messages:

FAILED_WITH_INSTANCE_RUNNING
FAILED_WITH_INSTANCE_RUNNING
Suspend failed with instance in state RUNNING.

Resolution: Suspend the instance again at a later time. If you stillencounter issues, thencontact support.

Windows instance with display timeout or disabled sleep button

A Windows instance that has power policy configurations set to high performance,and a display timeout set to a value greater than 0, may turn off the displayafter the timeout. When you send a suspend request to an instance that has adisplay that was turned off, the suspend request restarts the display instead ofsuspending the instance.

Resolution: To resolve this issue, do the following:

  1. If you haven't already, then connect to the instance using one of thefollowing methods:

  2. Disable the display timeout:

    powercfg/changemonitor-timeout-ac0

  3. Enable the sleep button:

    powercfg-setacvalueindexSCHEME_CURRENT4f971e89-eebd-4455-a8de-9e59040e734796996bc0-ad50-47ec-923b-6f41874dd9eb1

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Last updated 2025-12-15 UTC.