Promote a Spot to on-demand

Promotion turns a Spot Instance into a regular on-demand server. The resource is permanently locked and the instance is no longer subject to reclaim: it can no longer be revoked. It is a one-way operation: once promoted, the server does not go back to spot.

When it makes sense

Promotion is useful when a workload that started as spot has become important and the risk of termination with notice is no longer acceptable — for example a batch job that is almost complete, or a worker that has gone from experimental to production.

From the web panel

From the API

Promotion is performed by updating the server's spot status:

PATCH /api/v2/servers/<servername>/spot-status
{
  "status": "promoted"
}

The operation is idempotent: calling it on an already-promoted server has no effect and still returns 200. Details in Spot Instances API.

Conditions

Promotion is possible only while the instance is active (ok). If the termination notice has already started, it is too late:

Current state	Result
ok	✅ Promoted to on-demand.
promoted	✅ No effect: already on-demand (idempotent operation).
terminating	❌ 400 — not promotable: termination already scheduled.
terminated	❌ 400 — not promotable: instance already terminated.
not a spot	❌ 404 — the server is not a Spot Instance.

Timing

There is a small race window between promotion and reclaim: both act on the same state. Whoever gets there first wins — if reclaim has already moved the instance to terminating, promotion fails; conversely, a promotion that just happened protects the instance from a later reclaim.

After promotion

The server becomes on-demand in every respect: the instance can no longer be revoked and the spot limitations fall away (Templates, Snapshots and Reserved become available again).