Customer enforcement
Suspend a customer VM, pause billing without credit, and block further purchases
Use enforcement when you need to stop abuse, fraud, or a copyright complaint without deleting the disk. NodeRings staff can also seize any VM and ban a user or organization.
Refunds, goodwill credits, and subscription cancel are separate billing tools. Suspend only pauses charges. It does not credit unused time.
Suspend a virtual machine
On the customer page (/billing/customers), open the customer and use the shield action on a VM.
What happens:
- The guest is powered off.
- The customer cannot start, stop, reinstall, console, or otherwise change that VM.
- Billing for that VM pauses. No new invoices or usage charges while it stays exclusive to this VM. Shared subscriptions stay active if another live VM on the same subscription is not held.
- Disks and backups stay until you or NodeRings delete the VM.
- The customer gets email copy "Your service has been suspended" plus your optional message, and an abuse ticket is opened.
Choose a reason: Abuse, Fraud, Copyright, or Other. The optional message is visible to the customer.
After you Unblock, the VM stays stopped. Someone with start permission must start it. Prepaid time that elapsed during the hold is not added back.
Block purchases
On the same customer page, Block purchases stops that customer from creating or buying more VMs from you. Existing VMs are unchanged until you suspend them.
Allow purchases lifts only your provider-scoped block. If NodeRings blocked purchases for the organization, only NodeRings can lift that block.
When NodeRings holds the VM
If the customer page shows Held instead of Unblock, NodeRings placed the hold. You cannot start, unblock, or delete that VM. Open a ticket with NodeRings if you need it released.
Billing during a hold
| Topic | Behavior |
|---|---|
| Recurring charges | Paused (no new invoices / usage) |
| Credit / period extension | None on unblock |
| Paying an old invoice | Does not start the VM or lift the hold |
| Disk | Kept until a provider or NodeRings delete |
NodeRings staff
With the NodeRings organization selected, use /tickets/enforcement to:
- Suspend, unblock, or delete any VM
- Block or unblock purchases for an organization (all providers)
- Ban or unban a user or organization
Ban expires sessions and seizes live VMs as a NodeRings hold. Unban does not start VMs or clear those holds. Unblock each VM when the investigation is over.