Pay-per-Use Billing

Applicable Scenarios

You can create ECSs with specified specifications on a DeH. ECSs created on the DeH are free of charge, and you only need to pay for the associated resources you used such as images, EIPs, EVS disks, and CBR.

Billing Items

The following billing items are involved when you create an ECS on a DeH.

If you want to create an ECS with a Windows image, a data disk, and an EIP that is billed by bandwidth, the prices will include:

• The EVS disks (system disks and data disks)
• The EIP bandwidth
• The Windows image

Billed Usage Period

Pay-per-use resource usage is calculated by the second and billed every hour. The billing starts when the ECS instance is launched and ends when the instance is deleted.

It takes a certain time to launch an ECS instance. The billing starts from the Launched time on the ECS Summary page.

For example, if you created an ECS (including resources like images and system disks) at 8:45:30 and deleted it at 8:55:30, you are billed for the 600 seconds from 8:45:30 to 8:55:30.

Billing Examples

Suppose you created an ECS (CentOS 7.9 64-bit image, system and data disks, and 6 Mbit/s of bandwidth) on April 18, 2023, 9:59:30 and deleted it on April 18, 2023, 10:45:46. Two usage periods will be billed:

• Usage of 30 seconds from 9:59:30 to 10:00:00
• Usage of 2,746 seconds from 10:00:00 to 10:45:46

You are billed for both usage periods. The pay-per-use resources are billed individually as described in Table 2. The price displayed in the pricing details is per hour, so you need to divide it by 3,600 to obtain the price for each second and then multiple the per-second price by the total number of seconds.

Figure 1 shows how the total price is calculated.

The prices in the figure are examples only. The actual prices are those displayed on ECS Pricing Details.

Figure 1 Total price for pay-per-use resources

Price Change After Specification Change

If you change the specifications of vCPUs and memory of an ECS, there will be no fees incurred. As the specifications of the resources associated with the ECS, such as images, EIPs, EVS disks, and CBR, cannot be changed, there will be no impact on the billing of the pay-per-use resources.

Impact of Arrears

Figure 2 shows the statuses the pay-per-use resources, such as images, EIPs, EVS disks, and CBR, can have throughout their lifecycle. After an ECS instance is purchased, it enters the valid period and runs normally during this period. If your account goes into arrears due to automatic fee deduction for the pay-per-use resources, the ECS instance enters a grace period and then a retention period.

Figure 2 Lifecycle of pay-per-use resources

Arrears Reminder

The system will deduct fees for pay-per-use resources at the end of each billing cycle. If your account goes into arrears, we will notify you by email, SMS, or in-app message.

Impacts of Arrears

• If your account goes into arrears, the resources will enter a grace period.

  If there is no top-up account with sufficient balance and no other payment method configured to pay for the resources used, such as images, EIPs, EVS disks, and CBR, your account goes into arrears, and the resources enter a grace period. You are still responsible for expenditures generated during the grace period. You can view the charges on the Billing Center > Overview page and pay any past due balance as needed.

• If you do not pay off arrears within the grace period, your resources will enter a retention period.

  If you do not bring your account balance current before the grace period expires, the resource status turns to Frozen and it enters a retention period. You cannot perform any operations on the resources.

• If you do not pay off arrears within the retention period, the resources will be released, and the data cannot be restored.

  If you still fail to pay after the retention period ends, the resources like images, EIPs, EVS disks, and CBR will be released, and the data cannot be restored.

• For details about the grace period and 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 topping up your account, see Topping Up an Account.

Billing for a Stopped ECS

The billing for pay-per-use resources, such as images, EIPs, EVS disks, and CBR, varies depending on the resource type after the associated ECS is stopped.