I’ve been running a droplet containing a web server the past year using monthly pricing. I’d like to get a second droplet for running a server for a video game but I’d only be using it during certain times of the day. From my understanding, if I were to use hourly pricing, I’d only be charged when the droplet is in use? When I don’t need it, could I create a snapshot, delete the droplet, and restore it when needed? Since I’ve never needed to do that, is that a quick process? Furthermore, could I automate that process so it automatically turns on from xpm-ypm on weekdays and then snapshots and destroys itself when it’s not those hours? Thanks for answering my questions!
This textbox defaults to using Markdown to format your answer.
You can type !ref in this text area to quickly search our full set of tutorials, documentation & marketplace offerings and insert the link!
These answers are provided by our Community. If you find them useful, show some love by clicking the heart. If you run into issues leave a comment, or add your own answer to help others.
Want to learn more? Join the DigitalOcean Community!
Join our DigitalOcean community of over a million developers for free! Get help and share knowledge in Q&A, subscribe to topics of interest, and get courses and tools that will help you grow as a developer and scale your project or business.
Hello,
Yes, you could absolutely do that and you would be charged only for the hours that the droplet existed.
To create a snapshot, it usually takes up to 1 minute per GB of data used by your Droplet. So if your droplet uses 20GB, that it could take up to 20 minutes for the snapshot process to complete.
You can automate the whole process with the DigitalOcean’s API. So for example to create a new droplet based on a snapshot, you need to supply its ID for the image parameter:
Hope that this helps. Regards, Bobby
if i turn off a droplet, would be charged too ?