Updated on 2025-12-19 GMT+08:00

Changing Yearly/Monthly CUs (Specifications)

Scenario

The yearly/monthly CU adjustment for elastic resource pools allows you to modify resource configurations and billing modes based on actual usage needs. This ensures efficient resource utilization and cost optimization.

For a yearly/monthly elastic resource pool, CUs within the range defined by yearly/monthly CUs (specifications) are billed under the yearly/monthly mode. Any excess CUs beyond this range are billed by CUH. By adjusting the specification according to your actual CU usage, you can achieve more favorable billing terms.

For example, if the current yearly/monthly CUs (specifications) for the elastic resource pool are 64, but most of the time your usage exceeds 128 CUs, without adjustment, only the first 64 CUs will be billed on a yearly/monthly basis, while the additional 64 CUs will be billed by CUH. To optimize costs, you can adjust the specification limit to 128. Once updated, all 128 CUs will fall under the yearly/monthly billing mode, resulting in overall savings.

In summary, adjusting the yearly/monthly CUs (specifications) converts the billing mode for excess resources from pay-per-use to yearly/monthly, enhancing efficiency and reducing costs.

Precautions

  • Only yearly/monthly elastic resource pools support CU (specifications) adjustments.
  • Adjustments to a queue's CU range, changes to the pool's yearly/monthly CUs (specifications), or modifications to the pool's CU settings take effect at the next full hour.
  • Increasing the number of queues to adjust the pool's actual CUs takes immediate effect.

Basic Concepts of Elastic Resource Pools

This section explains the meanings of actual CUs, used CUs, CU range, and yearly/monthly CUs (specifications) in elastic resource pools.

Checking Before Yearly/Monthly CUs (Specifications) Change (Scale-Out)

Before changing the yearly/monthly CUs (specifications) (scale-out), check whether the actual CUs are greater than or equal to the target CUs of the new specifications.

If the actual CUs are fewer than the target CUs, you need to increase the maximum CUs of queues or add more queues to adjust the actual CUs.

Example: A yearly/monthly elastic resource pool has 64 actual CUs, a CU range of 64–96, and specifications of 64 CUs. The planned target specification is 80 CUs.

Procedure

  1. Increase the actual CUs of the elastic resource pool to 80 by adjusting the maximum CUs of existing queues or adding new queues within the current elastic resource pool.

    When the total maximum CUs of all queues exceeds the actual CUs of the elastic resource pool, the actual CUs will increase. The adjusted actual CUs = min(total maximum CUs of queues, maximum CU limit of the elastic resource pool). (Changes to the CU range of a queue take effect at the next full hour.)

  2. Once the actual CUs have been increased to 80, proceed with the specification change operation to update the elastic resource pool's specifications to 80 CUs. (Elastic resource pool specification changes take effect at the next full hour.)

    After the specification change, the minimum CU in the CU range of the elastic resource pool will also align with the actual CUs.

Scaling Out

  1. In the navigation pane on the left of the console, choose Resources > Resource Pool.
  2. Locate the elastic resource pool you want to scale out, click More in the Operation column, and select Modify Yearly/Monthly CU.
  3. On the Modify Yearly/Monthly CU page, set Operation to Scale-out and specify the number of CUs you want to add.
    Figure 4 Scaling out
  4. Confirm the changes and click OK.
  5. Choose Job Management > SQL Jobs to view the status of the SCALE_POOL SQL job.

    If the job status is Scaling, the elastic resource pool is scaling out. Wait until the job status changes to Finished.

Scaling In

By default, the minimum number of CUs is 16. That is, when the specifications of an elastic resource pool are 16 CUs, you cannot scale the pool down.

  1. In the navigation pane on the left, choose Resources > Resource Pool.
  2. Locate the elastic resource pool you want to scale in, click More in the Operation column, and select Modify Yearly/Monthly CU.
  3. On the Modify Yearly/Monthly CU page, set Operation to Scale-in and specify the number of CUs you want to decrease.
    Figure 5 Scaling in
  4. Confirm the changes and click OK.
  5. Choose Job Management > SQL Jobs to view the status of the SCALE_POOL SQL job.

    If the job status is Scaling, the elastic resource pool is scaling in. Wait until the job status changes to Finished.