How to correctly stop Google Cloud Datalab

Question

Playing with data is a joy in Junyper/Datalab, but I do not want it to become costly.

Google recommends:

"You can minimize compute charges by stopping/restarting Cloud Datalab instances."

However, if I stop the AppEngine instance or the Compute Engine VM instance, they simply restart ...

So how to correctly stop/pause Google Cloud Datalab, so that I'm only charged for my use, not for the idle time? Is there some kind of trigger that restarts the instances?

Answer 1

Here's what I'm doing. I like keeping everything in the cloud; but, I want to resume work with minimal fuss and cost.

Save Data/Source and Delete Datalab

1. Commit changes to Your Cloud Git Repository. As long as the source changes are committed, they'll pop backup when you re-create google cloud. Keep your data in buckets gs://... or BigQuery. Commit all changed Notebooks.

Your Cloud Git Repository

2. Delete the datalab module.

https://console.cloud.google.com/projectselector/appengine/versions?moduleId=datalab

Resuming Your Work:

When you're ready to resume your work, goto launch cloud datalab sign-in, and deploy. It will take 6 or 7 minutes. Once it's deployed, up, and running, you can go directly to your tree and resume your work. You're probably talking 10 minutes tops.