Credit sanction lifecycle
When a prepaid Credit balance runs low or reaches zero, FPT Cloud applies sanctions in stages to protect your account before any data is lost. Knowing each stage tells you how much time you have and how much to top up to recover.
How the stages progress
Sanctions apply to prepaid subscriptions and escalate only while the balance stays too low:
- Warning —
0 < Credit < 12h of usage. You still run normally, but new-resource creation is blocked once the balance drops below 3 hours of usage. - Restricted —
Credit ≤ 0. All VMs are powered off and you can only view and delete resources. - Suspended — 1 day after Restricted with no top-up. All services pause; data is kept.
- Terminated — 7 days after Suspended with no top-up. All resources are revoked and deleted.
What "hours of usage" means
Thresholds are measured against your recent spend, not a fixed amount. Total usage cost (12h) is your average rolling cost over the last 12 hours; the 6h, 3h, and 1h figures follow the same idea. A balance worth "3 hours of usage" therefore changes as your spend changes.
Recovery at any stage
Topping up is re-evaluated immediately — you never wait out a countdown:
- Credit reaches ≥ 12h of usage → the sanction is fully removed and service is restored.
- Credit is above 0 but below 12h → the account returns to the matching Warning level; VMs come back on, with resource-creation limits still applied.
Terminated is the one exception: it cannot be reverted.
Where to go next
- Warning levels — the first stage and its four levels.
- Service Suspended — how to recover a suspended account.