Idle shutdown

Vertex AI Workbench managed notebooks instances shut down after a specified period of inactivity by default. This page describes the idle shutdown feature and how to change the default idle shutdown settings during instance creation.

Overview

To help manage costs, managed notebooks instances shut down after being idle for a specific time period by default. You can change the amount of time or turn this feature off.

Billing

While your instance is shut down, there are no CPU or GPU usage charges except for scheduled executions that run during the shutdown. For more information about scheduled executions, see Scheduled executions run while instance is shut down on this page.

Disk storage charges still apply while your instance is shut down.

For more information, see Pricing.

Disable idle shutdown or change the default inactivity time period

Idle shutdown is enabled and set to shut down your instance after 180 inactive minutes by default.

You can change these settings when you create an instance.

To disable idle shutdown or to change the inactivity time period on an existing instance:

  1. In the Google Cloud console, go to the Managed notebooks page.

    Go to Managed notebooks

  2. Click the instance name.

  3. On the Notebook details page, click the Software and security tab.

  4. In the Modify software and security configuration section:

    • To disable idle shutdown, clear the check mark next to Enable Idle Shutdown.

    • To change the inactivity time period, in Time of inactivity before shutdown (Minutes), change the number to the number of minutes of inactivity that you want. In the Google Cloud console, this setting can be set to any integer value from 10 to 1440.

  5. Click Submit.

How idle timeout works

Your instance shuts down when there is no kernel activity for the specified time period. For example, running a cell or new output printing to a notebook is activity that resets the idle timeout timer. CPU usage doesn't reset the idle timeout timer.

Scheduled executions run while instance is shut down

If you have scheduled an execution of a notebook file in a managed notebooks instance that is shut down, it will still run on schedule.

For more information, see Run notebook files with the executor.

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