Lifecycle & Hibernation

The biggest challenge with Cloud IDEs is the “cost of idle time.” Aether Platform minimizes costs without compromising user experience through its proprietary lifecycle management engine.

Logical State Handling

Workspace states are managed in three phases:

1. Active: User connected. Compute resources (CPU/RAM) are allocated.
2. Hibernated: Disconnected for a set period. Memory is discarded, but disk (/home/workspace) is persisted. Billing is for storage only.
3. Archived: Project inactive for long periods (e.g., 30 days). Disk image is offloaded to Object Storage (S3) for lowest cost.

Scale-to-Zero Logic

When a user closes the browser tab or disconnects VS Code, the system starts a countdown.

• Default Timeout: 30 minutes (Configurable).
• Action: Upon timeout, the entire /home directory (including uncommitted Git changes) is snapshotted, and the Pod is terminated.

Instant Resume

Upon reconnection, Aether instantly mounts the user-specific Persistent Volume Claim (PVC) to a new Pod.

• Cold Start Time: Approx. 3-5 seconds.
• State Restoration: Previously open files and terminal history are preserved (Note: Running processes are reset).

Auto-Save & Git Integration

To prevent work loss from accidental crashes or timeouts:

• IDE Auto-Save: File changes are written to disk instantly.
• Uncommited State Backup: Even uncommitted changes are fully preserved during hibernation.