IBM Cloud: How to disable analytics engine when unused?

Question

I using Analytics Engine on IBM Cloud, but I can't see anywhere how I can stop it when I'm not working. So it takes one day to consumes all my credit as I'm using a Lite account. How to stop it or pause it when I'm not working?

Answer 1

The Lite plan for the Analytics Engine cannot be paused according to the service FAQ:

The node-hours cannot be paused, for example, you cannot use 10 node-hours, pause, and then come back and use the remaining 40 node-hours.

The only option to use the cluster longer is to scale it down when not in use. Resizing an Analytics Engine cluster can be done in different ways.

Answer 2

You can use "Spark Environments". It has more flexible billing model and you get charged for only the hours you actively use and stops when you shutdown your notebook or job.

Watson Studio Spark Environments

https://medium.com/ibm-watson/ibm-watson-studio-spark-environments-generally-available-f3dda78d3668

In Watson Studio, you can use:

Spark environments offered under Watson Studio.

All Watson Studio users can create Spark environments with varying hardware and software configurations. Spark environments offer Spark kernels as a service (SparkR, PySpark and Scala). Each kernel gets a dedicated Spark cluster and Spark executors. Spark environments are offered under Watson Studio and, like default environments, consume capacity unit hours (CUHs) that are tracked.

Spark services offered through IBM Cloud.

With IBM Analytics Engine, you are offered Hortonworks Data Platform on IBM Cloud. You get one VM per cluster node and your own local HDFS. You get Spark and the entire Hadoop ecosystem. You are given shell access and can also create notebooks. IBM Analytics Engine is not offered under Watson Studio; it must be purchased separately through IBM Cloud. See Add associated services.