Pay-per-Use Billing

Recommended Scenario

Pay-per-use is applicable to short-term, abrupt, or unpredictable services that cannot be interrupted, such as e-commerce flash sales, temporary testing, and scientific computing.

Billing Period

A pay-per-use DCS instance is billed in seconds, and settled on the hour (GMT+8). Once settlement is complete, it enters a new billing period. Billing starts from the time when the DCS instance is successfully created and ends at the time when the instance is deleted.

It takes a certain time to launch a DCS instance. Billing starts from the Run time on the DCS instance's Basic Information page

For example, if you purchase a pay-per-use DCS instance at 8:45:30, and delete it at 8:55:00, the billing period is from 8:00:00 to 9:00:00. Fees are generated from 8:45:30 to 8:55:30, and the billing duration is 600 seconds.

Billing Example

Assume that you purchased a pay-per-use DCS instance (specifications: basic edition | Redis 5.0 | master/standby | x86 | 2 replicas | 8 GB) at 9:59:30 on April 18, 2023, and deleted it at 10:45:46 on April 18, 2023.

• The first billing period is from 9:00:00 to 10:00:00. Fees are generated from 9:59:30 to 10:00:00. The billing duration is 30 seconds within the period.
• The second billing period is from 10:00:00 to 11:00:00. Fees are generated from 10:00:00 to 10:45:46. The billing duration is 2746 seconds within the period.

You need to pay for each billing period in advance. The billing formula is as follows: Unit price of instance specifications x Billing duration. For details about the hourly price of a DCS instance, see DCS Pricing Details. Divide the price by 3600 to obtain the price for each second.

The unit price of this pay-per-use instance is USD0.208/hour. The total fee for the two billing periods is 0.208 x (30 + 2746)/3600 = USD0.16.

The prices are for reference only. Actual prices are subject to those in DCS Pricing Details.

Impact on Billing After Specification Change

If you change instance specifications after purchasing a pay-per-use instance, a new order will be generated based on the new specification's price. The old order automatically becomes invalid.

If you change instance specifications within one hour, multiple billing records will be generated. The start time and end time of each billing record correspond to when different specification took effect within the hour.

For example, you purchased a pay-per-use DCS instance (basic edition | Redis 5.0 | master/standby | x86 | 2 replicas | 8 GB) at 9:00:00 and upgraded it to basic edition | Redis 5.0 | master/standby | x86 | two replicas | 16 GB at 9:30:00. Two billing records will be generated from 9:00:00 to 10:00:00.

• The first record corresponds to 9:00:00 to 9:30:00, based on the price for basic edition | Redis 5.0 | master/standby | x86 | 2 replicas | 8 GB.
• The second record corresponds to 9:30:00 to 10:00:00, based on the price for basic edition | Redis 5.0 | master/standby | x86 | 2 replicas | 16 GB.

Impact of Arrears

Figure 1 describes the status of each stage of a pay-per-use DCS instance. After you purchase a DCS instance, the instance is running properly within the billing period, this period is the validity period. When the automatic billing of a pay-per-use DCS instance leads to arrears on your account, the account status turns to arrears, and your DCS instance enters the grace period and retention period accordingly.

Figure 1 Life cycle of a pay-per-use DCS instance

Arrears Alert

The system will deduct fees for pay-per-use resources at the end of each billing period. You will be notified by email, SMS, or internal messages when your account is in arrears.

Arrears Impact

When your account is in arrears due to automatic fee deduction for pay-per-use DCS instances, the account status turns to arrears. In arrears, the pay-per-use resource continues rendering service but the resource enters the grace period. You need to pay the fees of your pay-per-use resource incurred during the grace period. To view the fees, go to the Billing Center > Overview page. Huawei Cloud will deduct the fees after you top up your account.

If you do not pay the arrears within the grace period, the instance enters the retention period and its status turns to Frozen. You cannot perform any operations on pay-per-use resources in the retention period.

If you do not pay the arrears within the retention period, your DCS instance will be released, and data will be lost.

• Both the grace and retention periods are 15 days.

• For details about how to make repayment, see Making Repayments (Postpaid Direct Customers).