A session established for an application is suspended from an instance and later resumed on the server or a different server. When a session is suspended, its state is captured and persistently stored as a session image in a data repository, and the session is terminated. When the session is resumed, a new session is established on an instance, the session image of the session to resume is retrieved from the repository and restored to the newly established session. The suspension and resumption of a session may be initiated by an application, which may request the suspension and resumption of a session.