Reservation lifecycle
The stages of a reservation, from payment to the end: Pending payment, Upcoming, Live while the machine is prepared and ready, Completed, and the erase.
On this page
Every reservation moves through the same stages. Its current stage is shown on My Reservations and on the reservation's own page. All times are UTC.
The stages
| Stage | What it means |
|---|---|
| Pending payment | You're at checkout. The days are held for you for about 30 minutes. |
| Upcoming | Paid. The machine is yours from the start of the first day. |
| Live | The reservation has started. The page shows Preparing your machine… until the machine is ready, then the commands. |
| Completed | The reservation has ended and everything on the machine has been erased. |
Two other outcomes:
| Stage | What it means |
|---|---|
| Expired | The checkout wasn't paid in time, so the hold was released. Nothing was charged. |
| Refunded | The payment was refunded in full, for example after a late payment when no machine was free. |
From payment to start
After you pay, the reservation is Upcoming and you receive a confirmation email with your receipt. Twelve hours before the start we send a pre-start reminder with the dates and the SSH key you'll connect with. If you book less than 12 hours ahead, the reminder comes straight away.
The start
A daily reservation starts at 00:00 UTC on its first day, and turns Live. The machine is then prepared for you:
- the previous renter's account is removed, and the machine restarts once;
- the
renteraccount is set up with the SSH key you chose; - your startup script, if any, starts running, as
renter.
This usually takes a few minutes. Until the machine reports that it's ready, the reservation page shows Preparing your machine…; then it shows Your machine is ready. A reservation can be Live and still preparing for those first few minutes.
Connecting
Once the reservation is live, its page shows how to connect, and we email you the same details:
- the SSH command for your machine's port, for example
ssh -p 2211 renter@ssh.gputorent.com(the port is never 22); - on a Mac Studio, the remote desktop steps;
- commands to copy files and forward a port.
The commands are shown only while the reservation is live. See Connecting.
While it's live
The machine is yours alone. Use it as you like within what's allowed and the Terms of Service: install software in your home folder, download models, run long jobs. The dashboard shows how much time is left.
An hour before the end, we send an Ending soon email as a reminder to copy your data off.
The end and the erase
A daily reservation ends at 23:59 UTC on its last day. At the end, everything is permanently erased:
- your home folder;
- your files anywhere else on the machine, such as
/tmpor shared folders; - the tools you installed;
- your crontab and background processes;
- the account itself, including your SSH key and any keys you added.
The reservation then shows Completed.
We keep no backups of anything on the machine. Copy what you need before the end — see Copying files.
Your account keeps the reservation's record: its dates, cost, the SSH key name and the startup script text. You can see them on My Reservations under Past.
Longer than the maximum
A reservation can be at most the plan's maximum number of days (5 by default). For longer work, book a second reservation starting the day after — within your concurrent limit. It may be on a different machine, with a different SSH port, and it starts from a clean one, so copy your work across before the first one ends.