Preemptible VMs, also known as spot VMs or spot instances, are virtual machines that Compute may stop at any time. This can happen when the system needs resources to launch a regular VM in the same region.
Compute sends a SIGTERM signal 60 seconds before stopping the VM. If your system does not respond in time, Compute sends a SIGKILL signal to force shutdown.
Compute preserves all data on the volumes attached to a stopped preemptible VM. It does not preserve dynamic resources, such as dynamic public IP addresses.
Preemptible VMs cost less than regular ones, but they do not provide guaranteed availability.
You can create a preemptible VM, but you cannot change the type of an existing VM—either from regular to preemptible or from preemptible to regular.
You can run preemptible VMs on all VM platforms with GPUs.
To get an up-to-date list of platforms, run the nebius compute platform list command. The platforms available for preemptible VMs are marked as allowed_for_preemptibles: true.
How to create a preemptible VM
Web console
CLI
Terraform
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In the sidebar, go to
Compute → Virtual machines.
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Click Create resource → Virtual machine.
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If you have capacity block groups, on the General step, select Pay-as-you-go VM. If you do not have capacity block groups, the wizard skips the General step and opens Compute instead.
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On the Compute step, select With GPUs or Without GPUs, set the VM type to Preemptible and select a platform and preset.
For more information about the full wizard, see How to create a virtual machine.
When creating a VM:
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Select a platform that supports preemptible VMs.
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Add the following parameters to the
nebius compute instance create command:
In this configuration, the following values are specified:
recovery_policy defines what Compute does with a VM after it’s preempted or fails. Preemptible VMs support only the FAIL value, which stops the VM. They do not support the RECOVER value, which tries to restart the VM. Setting RECOVER for a preemptible VM results in an error.on_preemption specifies what happens when the VM is preempted. The only supported value is STOP: Compute stops the VM without deleting or restarting it.
For details about the nebius compute instance create command, see the Nebius AI Cloud CLI reference. When creating a VM, select a platform that supports preemptible VMs and set the following parameters in the VM configuration:In this configuration, the following values are specified:
recovery_policy defines what Compute does with a VM after it’s preempted or fails. Preemptible VMs support only the FAIL value, which stops the VM. They do not support the RECOVER value, which tries to restart the VM. Setting RECOVER for a preemptible VM results in an error.on_preemption specifies what happens when the VM is preempted. The only supported value is STOP: Compute stops the VM without deleting or restarting it.
For details about the nebius_compute_v1_instance Terraform resource, see the provider reference. A dynamic IP address is released when a preemptible VM stops. To keep your workload stable, consider using a static IP address instead.
How to continue working with a stopped preemptible VM
When Compute stops a preemptible VM, it preserves all data on the attached volumes. To resume work, start the VM again. If you used a dynamic IP address, update all systems that depended on the old IP address.
If the VM uses local SSD disks, use them with caution. Local SSD disks are ephemeral, meaning any data stored on them will be lost when the preemptible VM stops.
You can also create a regular VM with the same attached volumes. 