Cross-zone migration

Move ECS instances between availability zones in the same region while optionally changing instance types.

Use cases

Change the zone of an ECS instance
- The required instance types are unavailable in the current zone.
- Business needs require instances in a different zone within the same region.
Change the instance type of an ECS instance

The current instance type does not meet your requirements.

The following diagram illustrates the migration workflow.

You cannot move a preemptible instance across availability zones.
You can only change to a type within the same instance family (vCPUs and memory). Instance families.

Note
To change to a different instance family, complete the cross-zone migration first, then change the instance type. Change the instance type of a subscription instance, , or Change the instance type of a pay-as-you-go instance.
You can move up to five instances at a time in the ECS console. To increase this limit, contact technical support.
The following instance families cannot be moved across availability zones:
- Heterogeneous computing instance families
- ECS Bare Metal Instance families
- Super Computing Cluster (SCC) instance families
- General-purpose instance family u2a
- Economy instance family e, except for e-c1m1, e-c1m2, and e-c1m4
- x86-based computing instance families:
  - Big data
  - Local SSD-equipped
  - Security-enhanced
- 8th-generation instance families, except for hfr8i, hfc8i, hfg8i, r8ae, g8ae, c8ae, r8y, c8y, g8y, r8a, g8a, c8a, g8i, r8i, and c8i
- 9th-generation instance families, except for r9i, g9i, and c9i

For more information about how to perform cross-zone migration, see Cross-zone migration guide.