Migrating to pools

Personal accounts don't need to do anything. Your VMs already share your account's capacity.

Teams moving to Work set up pools in three steps.

1. Create your default pool

When you switch to Work, you're asked to name your first pool and pick its region. New VMs created without --pool go there.

Other team plans are no longer sold, so you can't switch back after moving to Work.

2. Move existing VMs into pools

Your existing VMs stay outside any pool and keep running. An admin moves each one in with:

pool adopt --vm=<vm> --pool=<pool>

• The VM must be running or stopped.
• The VM must fit within the pool's size. Resize the VM or the pool first if it doesn't.
• The VM moves to the pool's hardware, which can take several minutes.

Adopting is one-way. A VM in a pool can't go back outside a pool. The only way out is pool detach --vm=<vm>, which makes it a standalone VM billed by the hour.

ls --group=type lists VMs still outside a pool under "Dedicated VMs". While the team has any, an admin can keep new VMs outside pools too with team settings vm-placement poolless. See Default placement.

3. Create more pools as needed

pool new build --cpus=8 --region=lax

Use separate pools for work you want to size, place, or track separately. See VM pools for sizes and pricing.

Billing while you migrate

VMs outside a pool are not billed by the hour. Their disk and bandwidth are still metered. Once a VM is adopted, it uses its pool's capacity, which is billed as described in VM pools.