---
site_name: Deltacloud API
title: Instance states
---
Each cloud defines a slightly different lifecycle model for instances. In some clouds, instances start running immediately after creation, in others, they enter a pending state and you need to start them explicitly.
Differences between clouds are modelled by expressing the lifecycle of an instance as a finite state machine and capturing it in an instance states entity.The API defines the following states for an instance:
The details of a particular instance describes also the actions (state transitions) which can be performed on the instance. The possible instance actions are:
Example request:
GET /api/instance_states?format=xml HTTP/1.1 Authorization: Basic AU1J3UB2121Afd1DdyQWxLaTYTmJMNF4zTXBoRGdhMDh2RUw5ZDAN9zVXVa== User-Agent: curl/7.20.1 (i386-redhat-linux-gnu) Host: localhost:3002 Accept: */*
Server response:
HTTP/1.1 200 OK Content-Type: application/xml Content-Length: 583 <states> <state name='start'> <transition action='create' to='pending'></transition> </state> <state name='pending'> <transition auto='true' to='running'></transition> </state> <state name='running'> <transition action='reboot' to='running'></transition> <transition action='stop' to='shutting_down'></transition> </state> <state name='shutting_down'> <transition auto='true' to='stopped'></transition> </state> <state name='stopped'> <transition auto='true' to='finish'></transition> </state> <state name='finish'> </state> </states>Instances