Virtual Machine Leasing

VM Leasing

VM leasing lets you enforce automatic power-off or deletion of virtual machines (VMs) after a fixed amount of time. Leases are defined once per tenant and inherited by every existing and future VM that belongs to that tenant. Administrators and self-service users can also override the lease for an individual VM when needed.

Lease-End Actions

Action	Result	Typical Use Case
Power Off	VM is gracefully shut down. Disks and metadata are retained.	Development or lab workloads you may revive later.
Delete	VM (and its attached ephemeral disks) is permanently removed.	Disposable environments or cost-control scenarios.

Tenant-Level Lease Policy

You can set the tenant-level lease policy by navigating to Settings > Tenants & Users > Tenants (on left navigation pane) > choose a Tenant > click the Manage Lease Policy button on the table header.

The tenant lease policy management screens allow you to manage the following lease configuration:

Enable Lease Policy: Turns leasing on or off for the tenant.

Lease Duration: The total time in Days, Hours, Minutes that each VM may run before the lease expires. The timer starts at VM creation.

Action Upon Lease Expiration: Defines the action triggered on lease expiration.

• Power Off VM (default): the VM is shut down.

• Delete VM: the VM is deleted.

Info

Caution If you shorten the lease and existing VMs have already exceeded the new duration, the chosen lease-end action executes immediately.

Per-VM Lease Customization

You can modify a lease at the VM level by navigating to Virtual Machines on the left-hand navigation pane > Virtual Machines > select a virtual machine > Other dropdown in the table header > Customize Lease

You can perform the following actions on the VM lease from the customization screen.

• Specify action upon lease expiration: Defines the action triggered on lease expiration for the selected VM. This selection overrides the action set at the tenant level.

  • Power Off VM (default): the VM is shut down.

  • Delete VM: the VM is deleted.

• End sooner: Pick a new date/time earlier than the current expiration to force an earlier shutdown or deletion.

• Extend unexpired VMs: Extend the lease by up to one additional lease period as defined in the tenant policy (e.g., +5 days if the policy is 5 days). You can repeat extensions indefinitely.

• Extend expired VMs: Even after a VM’s lease has expired, you can grant an extension (subject to the same maximum).

Info

After a VM is powered-off by the lease engine, any manual power-on is only momentary. PCD will power the VM off again almost immediately.

Permissions Matrix

The following table outlines the VM leasing permissions that the Admin, Self-Service, and Read-Only roles have.

Role	Set Tenant Policy	Edit Lease (VM-level)	Create VM
Admin	✔	✔	✔
Self-service User	✖	✔	✔
Read-only User	✖	✖	✖

Troubleshooting

Symptom	Cause	Resolution
VM powers off immediately after you start it	Lease already expired	Extend the lease or disable the tenant-level policy.
Cannot extend lease beyond a certain date	Max extension equals one full lease period	Increase the lease duration at the tenant level first.