Yearly/Monthly

Scenario

In yearly/monthly mode, you need to first pay for a certain duration. This mode is suitable for services with the following characteristics:

• Stable services: enterprises' official websites, online malls, blogs, and others. Yearly/Monthly billing provides higher cost efficiency.
• Long-term projects: scientific research projects, large-scale events, and others. Yearly/Monthly billing facilitates stable supply of resources throughout the project.
• Service peak estimation: e-commerce promotion season, festivals, holidays, and others. Resources insufficiency can be avoided by pre-purchasing resources for peak demands.
• High data security: For services that require high data security, yearly/monthly billing facilitates continuous usage of the resources.

Billing Items

DMS for Kafka charges you for your Kafka instance and disk storage space. They support yearly/monthly billing.

Assume that you plan to purchase a Kafka instance with 300 GB storage space. At the bottom of the Buying a Kafka Instance page, you can view price details, as shown Figure 1.

Figure 1 Example price

The price includes:

• Instance fee: Calculated based on the selected broker flavor and quantity.
• Storage space fee: Calculated based on the selected disk type and total disk storage space (Single broker's storage space × Broker quantity).

Billing Period

The billing period of yearly/monthly Kafka instance is determined by purchase duration (UTC+8). The billing period starts from the time you activate or renew your subscription (precise to seconds), and ends at 23:59:59 on the expiration date.

For example, if you purchased a Kafka instance for one month on Mar 08, 2023, 15:50:04, the billing period is from Mar 08, 2023, 15:50:04 to Apr 08, 2023, 23:59:59.

Billing Samples

Assume that you purchased a yearly/monthly Kafka instance (kafka.2u4g.cluster × 3, ultra-high I/O 300 GB total storage space) in AP-Singapore on Mar 08, 2023, 15:50:04. The billing items include the instance (broker flavor and quantity) and storage space (ultra-high I/O 300 GB). Assume the subscription is for one month, and will be manually renewed for one month before it expires:

• The first billing period: Mar 08, 2023, 15:50:04–Apr 08, 2023, 23:59:59
• The second billing period: Apr 08, 2023, 23:59:59–May 08, 2023, 23:59:59

You need to pay for each billing period first, and Kafka instance resources are charged individually. The billing formula is shown in Table 2.

Figure 2 shows the billing calculation.

The prices in the following two pictures are for reference only. Actual prices are subject to Product Pricing Details.

Figure 2 Sample fees calculation of a yearly/monthly Kafka instance (AP-Singapore)

Impact on Billing After Specification Change

If the current resource specifications of your yearly/monthly Kafka instance no longer meet your needs, you can change the specifications on the Kafka instance console. The system calculates billing change according to the following rules:

• Specification upgrade: You need to pay the price difference.
• Specification downgrade: Huawei Cloud will refund you the price difference.

Take a specification upgrade without discounts as an example. Assume that you purchased a yearly/monthly Kafka instance (kafka.2u4g.cluster × 3) for one month in AP-Singapore on Apr 08, 2023, and you plan to change the specification to kafka.4u8g.cluster × 3 on Apr 18, 2023. The price for the old specification is USD403.2/month, and the new one is USD806.4/month. The formula is as follows:

Specification upgrade fee = New specification price × Remaining period – Old specification price × Remaining period

The remaining period in the formula is the remaining days of each calendar month divided by the maximum days of corresponding calendar month. In this sample, the remaining period = 12/30 (the remaining days of April/the maximum days of April) + 8/31 (the remaining days of May/the maximum days of May) = 0.6581. Then, the upgrade fees = 806.4 × 0.6581 – 403.2 × 0.6581 = USD265.35.

For more information, see Pricing of a Changed Specification.

Impact of Expiration

Figure 3 describes the status of each stage of a yearly/monthly Kafka instance. After purchase, the Kafka instance runs properly within the billing period, and this period is the validity period. When the Kafka instance expires and you do not renew it, it goes into the grace period and then the retention period.

Figure 3 Life cycle of a yearly/monthly Kafka instance

Expiration Reminder

From the 7th day before a yearly/monthly Kafka instance expires, the system will send an expiration reminder to the creator of Huawei Cloud account by email, SMS, and internal message.

Impact of Expiration

• Grace period
  If your yearly/monthly Kafka instance expires and you do not renew it, it goes into the grace period and its status turns to Expired. Within the grace period, you can access your Kafka instance, but the following operations will be restricted:

  • Changing specifications
  • Enabling or disabling Smart Connect
• Retention period

  If you do not renew your yearly/monthly Kafka instance before the grace period ends, it goes into the retention period and its status turns to Frozen. You cannot perform any operations on your yearly/monthly Kafka instance in the retention period.

• Permanent release

  Renew the instance within the retention period. Otherwise, the instance will be released and the data cannot be restored.

• For details about the grace period and the retention period, see What Is a Grace Period of Huawei Cloud? How Long Is It? and What Is a Retention Period of Huawei Cloud? How Long Is It?
• For details about renewals, see Overview.