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Moving an instance group to a different availability zone

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Updated at July 9, 2026
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If your instance group is connected to a load balancer, follow these guides as appropriate:

To move an instance group to a different availability zone:

  1. Create a subnet in the availability zone you want to move your instance group to.

  2. Add the group instances to the new availability zone:

    1. In the management console, open the folder containing the instance group you need.

    2. Navigate to Compute Cloud.

    3. In the left-hand panel, select Instance groups.

    4. Select the instance group to update.

    5. In the top-right corner, click Edit.

    6. Under Allocation, add the availability zone you want to move the instance group to.

    7. If your instance group is a manually scaled one, under Scaling, specify a group size sufficient to place instances in all the selected availability zones.

      You will be able to reset the number of instances back to the initial one after all the instances in the group are moved to the new availability zone and deleted from the previous one.

    8. If your instance group is an autoscaling one and has the OPPORTUNISTIC shutdown strategy, change the strategy to PROACTIVE in the Stop VMs by strategy field.

      You will be able to reset the shutdown strategy back to OPPORTUNISTIC after all the instances in the group are moved to the new availability zone and deleted from the previous one.

    9. Click Save.

    If you do not have the Yandex Cloud CLI yet, install and initialize it.

    The folder used by default is the one specified when creating the CLI profile. To change the default folder, use the yc config set folder-id <folder_ID> command. You can also specify a different folder for any command using --folder-name or --folder-id. If you access a resource by its name, the search will be limited to the default folder. If you access a resource by its ID, the search will be global, i.e., through all folders based on access permissions.

    1. Open the instance group specification file and edit the instance template:

      • Under allocation_policy, add a new availability zone.

      • Under network_interface_specs, add the ID of the previously created subnet.

      • If your instance group is a manually scaled one, under scale_policy, specify a group size sufficient to place instances in all the selected availability zones.

        You will be able to reset the number of instances back to the initial one after all the instances in the group are moved to the new availability zone and deleted from the previous one.

      • If your instance group is an autoscaling one and has the OPPORTUNISTIC shutdown strategy, change the strategy to PROACTIVE under deploy_policy.

        You will be able to reset the shutdown strategy back to OPPORTUNISTIC after all the instances in the group are moved to the new availability zone and deleted from the previous one.

    2. See the description of the CLI command for updating an instance group:

      yc compute instance-group update --help

    3. Get a list of all instance groups in the default folder:

      yc compute instance-group list

      Result:

      +----------------------+---------------------------------+--------+--------+
|          ID          |              NAME               | STATUS |  SIZE  |
+----------------------+---------------------------------+--------+--------+
| cl15sjqilrei******** | first-fixed-group-with-balancer | ACTIVE |      3 |
| cl19s7dmihgm******** | test-group                      | ACTIVE |      2 |
+----------------------+---------------------------------+--------+--------+

    4. Update the instance group:

      yc compute instance-group update \
  --id <instance_group_ID> \
  --file <instance_specification_file>

      Where:

      • --id: Instance group ID.
      • --file: Path to the instance group specification file.

      Result:

      id: cl15sjqilrei********
...
allocation_policy:
zones:
- zone_id: <previous_availability_zone>
- zone_id: <new_availability_zone>
...

    If you do not have Terraform yet, install it and configure the Yandex Cloud provider.

    1. Open the Terraform configuration file for the instance group. Specify the new availability zone under allocation_policy and the ID of the previously created subnet under network_interface.

      ...
network_interface {
  subnet_ids = [
    "<ID_of_subnet_in_previous_availability_zone>",
    "<ID_of_subnet_in_new_availability_zone>"
  ]
}
...
allocation_policy {
  zones = [
    "<previous_availability_zone>",
    "<new_availability_zone>"
  ]
}
...

      Where:

      • zones: Availability zones to host the instance group, both the new and previous ones.
      • subnet_ids: IDs of subnets in the availability zones to host the instance group.

      If your instance group is a manually scaled one, under scale_policy, specify a group size sufficient to place instances in all the selected availability zones.

      ...
scale_policy {
  fixed_scale {
    size = <number_of_instances_in_group>
  }
}
...

      You will be able to reset the number of instances back to the initial one after all the instances in the group are moved to the new availability zone and deleted from the previous one.

      If your instance group is an autoscaling one and has the OPPORTUNISTIC shutdown strategy, change the strategy to PROACTIVE:

      ...
deploy_policy {
  strategy = "proactive" 
}
...

      You will be able to reset the shutdown strategy back to OPPORTUNISTIC after all the instances in the group are moved to the new availability zone and deleted from the previous one.

      For more information about resource properties in Terraform, see this provider guide.

    2. Apply the changes:

      1. In the terminal, navigate to the configuration file directory.

      2. Make sure the configuration is correct using this command:

        terraform validate

        If the configuration is valid, you will get this message:

        Success! The configuration is valid.

      3. Run this command:

        terraform plan

        You will see a list of resources and their properties. No changes will be made at this step. Terraform will show any errors in the configuration.

      4. Apply the configuration changes:

        terraform apply

      5. Type yes and press Enter to confirm the changes.

      This will add the new availability zone for your instance group. You can check the updates using the management console or this CLI command:

      yc compute instance-group get <instance_group_name>

    Use the update REST API method for the InstanceGroup resource or the InstanceGroupService/Update gRPC API call.

    If your instance group is a manually scaled one, specify a group size sufficient to place instances in all the selected availability zones. You will be able to reset the number of instances back to the initial one after all the instances in the group are moved to the new availability zone and deleted from the previous one.

    If your instance group is an autoscaling one and has the OPPORTUNISTIC shutdown strategy, change the strategy to PROACTIVE. You will be able to reset the shutdown strategy back to OPPORTUNISTIC after all the instances in the group are moved to the new availability zone and deleted from the previous one.

    Wait until the instances appear in the new availability zone and get the Running Actual status.

  3. Delete the group instances from the previous availability zone:

    1. In the management console, open the folder containing the instance group you need.
    2. Navigate to Compute Cloud.
    3. In the left-hand panel, select Instance groups.
    4. Select the instance group to update.
    5. In the top-right corner, click Edit.
    6. Under Allocation, deselect the previous availability zone.
    7. Click Save.

    1. Open the instance group specification file and edit the instance template:

      • Delete the previous availability zone from the allocation_policy section.
      • Delete the ID of the subnet in the previous availability zone from the network_interface_specs section.

    2. Update the instance group:

      yc compute instance-group update \
  --id <instance_group_ID> \
  --file <instance_specification_file>

      Where:

      • --id: Instance group ID.
      • --file: Path to the instance group specification file.

      Result:

      id: cl15sjqilrei********
...
allocation_policy:
zones:
- zone_id: <new_availability_zone>
...

    1. Open the Terraform configuration file for the instance group. Delete the previous availability zone from the allocation_policy section and the ID of the subnet in the previous availability zone from the network_interface section:

      ...
network_interface {
  subnet_ids = ["<ID_of_subnet_in_new_availability_zone>"]
}
...
allocation_policy {
  zones = ["<new_availability_zone>"]
}
...

      Where:

      • zones: Availability zone to move the instance group to. You can specify multiple availability zones.
      • subnet_ids: ID of the subnet in the availability zone you want to move your instance group to.

      For more information about resource properties in Terraform, see this provider guide.

    2. Apply the changes:

      1. In the terminal, navigate to the configuration file directory.

      2. Make sure the configuration is correct using this command:

        terraform validate

        If the configuration is valid, you will get this message:

        Success! The configuration is valid.

      3. Run this command:

        terraform plan

        You will see a list of resources and their properties. No changes will be made at this step. Terraform will show any errors in the configuration.

      4. Apply the configuration changes:

        terraform apply

      5. Type yes and press Enter to confirm the changes.

      The group instances will be deleted from the previous availability zone. You can check the updates using the management console or this CLI command:

      yc compute instance-group get <instance_group_name>

    Use the update REST API method for the InstanceGroup resource or the InstanceGroupService/Update gRPC API call.

Useful links

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Disabling and enabling availability zones for an instance group
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Moving an instance group with a network load balancer to a different availability zone