Pay-Per-Use Billing

Application Scenarios

Pay-per-use billing is good for short-term, bursty, or unpredictable workloads that cannot tolerate any interruptions, such as applications for e-commerce flash sales, temporary testing, and scientific computing.

Billed Items

You are billed for the following items on a pay-per-use basis.

If you want to purchase a pay-per-use replica set DB instance with 2 vCPUs, 4 GB of memory, five nodes, and 40 GB of storage, the price will be as follows (excluding the backup space fee):

The backup space fee is not included. For details about the backup price, see the Product Pricing Details page.

Figure 1 Example price

The price includes:

• Instance specifications (including vCPUs and memory)
• Selected storage space

The backup space fee is not included. For details about the backup price, see the Product Pricing Details page.

Billed Usage Period

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

It takes a certain time to create a DB instance. The billing starts from the time in the End Time column on the Task Center page.

For example, if you purchased a pay-per-use DB instance 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 purchased a pay-per-use replica set DB instance (instance specifications: 2 vCPUs | 4 GB; number of nodes: 3; storage: 40 GB; backup space: 50 GB (40 GB for free)) 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
  • From April 18, 2023, 10:00:00 to April 18, 2023, 10:45:00, 20 GB of free backup space was used.
  • From April 18, 2023, 10:45:00 to April 18, 2023, 10:45:46, another 10 GB of backup space was used, which was billed for 46 seconds.

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. DDS resources are billed individually as follows:

Figure 2 shows how the total price is calculated.

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

Figure 2 Total price for a pay-per-use DB instance

Price Change After Specification Change

If you change the specifications of a pay-per-use DB instance, the original order will become invalid and a new order will be placed. You will be billed based on the new instance specifications.

If you change the instance specifications within a given hour, multiple records will be generated. Different records record the billing for different instance specifications.

For example, if you purchased a pay-per-use DB instance (2 vCPUs | 8 GB) at 9:00:00 and changed the instance specifications to 4 vCPUs | 16 GB at 9:30:00, the following items will be billed:

• DB instance (2 vCPUs | 8 GB) usage from 9:00:00 to 9:30:00
• DB instance (4 vCPUs | 16 GB) usage from 9:30:00 to 10:00:00

Impacts of Arrears

Figure 3 shows the statuses a pay-per-use DB instance can have throughout its lifecycle. After a DB instance is purchased, it enters the valid period and runs normally during this period. If your account goes into arrears, the DB instance enters a grace period and then a retention period.

Figure 3 Lifecycle of a pay-per-use DB instance

Arrears Reminder

The system will bill you for pay-per-use DB instances after each billing cycle ends. If your account goes into arrears, we will notify you by email, SMS, or in-app message.

Impacts of Arrears

If your account is insufficient to pay your amount due, your account goes into arrears, and the pay-per-use DB instance enters the 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 bring your account balance current before the grace period expires, the DB instance turns to Frozen and enters a retention period. You cannot perform any operations on a pay-per-use DB instance in the Frozen status.

If you do not bring your account balance current before the retention period ends, the DB instance will be released and data cannot be restored.

• During the retention period, you cannot access or use your DB instance but data stored in it can be retained. The retention period for the Huawei Cloud International website is 15 days.
• During the grace period, you can access and use only some resources of your DB instance. The grace period for the Huawei Cloud International website is 15 days.
• For details about top-up, see Topping Up an Account.