Which Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) billing feature can be used as a faster alternative to creating and deleting instances in situations where the client wants to scale their infrastructure up and down?

In IBM Cloud VPC, a user can place a virtual-server instance in the Stopped state. When the instance is stopped, “paused billing” is automatically applied: charges for vCPUs and RAM cease, while the boot volume and any reserved public IP continue to incur minimal cost. Restarting the instance is much faster than deleting and recreating it, so paused billing offers an efficient, on-demand way to scale infrastructure up or down without incurring full runtime charges.

A. Reserved billing Provides discounted pricing for long-term, continuously-running instances; does not help rapid up/down scaling.
B. Minimum billing No such billing model exists for IBM Cloud VPC instances.
C. Suspend billing Term used in some Classic infrastructure services, not supported for VPC virtual servers.

1. IBM Cloud Docs – Virtual Private Cloud, “Stopping and starting a virtual server instance” → paragraph “Paused billing begins when the instance is stopped; vCPU and RAM charges halt.” (docs/vpc?topic=vpc-managing-instances#stop-start)

2. IBM Cloud Docs – “Pricing details for Virtual Server for VPC” → section “Paused billing (stopped instances)” (docs/vpc?topic=vpc-instance-pricing#paused-billing)

3. IBM Cloud Docs – “Best practices for cost optimization in VPC” → subsection “Use paused billing instead of deleting and recreating instances.” (docs/vpc?topic=vpc-cost-best-practices#paused)