Start, stop, restart, shut down

Power controls are on the server's page. Four actions are available to you:

Shutdown versus stop

Shutdown is the one to use. It signals the guest, which flushes filesystem buffers and stops services in order. It needs a guest that responds to ACPI, which every stock image does.

Stop is the equivalent of pulling the plug. Use it when the guest is hung and shutdown has not worked. It can leave a filesystem needing a check on the next boot.

There is no pause or freeze action. A memory-only pause would not survive host maintenance and would not release reserved capacity, so it would still bill.

Requests are idempotent

Posting the same action twice does not queue two of them: the second request returns the one already in flight. Asking a running server to start, or a stopped server to stop, is refused with a message rather than doing nothing quietly.

When power actions are refused

• One job at a time. A reinstall, resize or another power action already running blocks a new one. Wait for it.
• Billing suspension. Power actions are blocked while the account is suspended. The page withholds the buttons rather than offering controls that will fail. See Low credit and suspension.
• Wrong state. A server that is provisioning, deleting or destroyed does not take power actions.

From the API

curl -X POST https://layeronecloud.com/api/v1/servers/4192/actions \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $LAYERONE_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"action": "restart"}'

See API recipes.