Help Center/ TaurusDB/ Billing/ Billing Modes/ Pay-per-Use Billing
Updated on 2024-09-05 GMT+08:00
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Pay-per-Use Billing

Pay-per-use billing means you pay nothing up front and are not tied into any contract or commitment. This section describes the billing rules of pay-per-use DB instances.

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.

Table 1 Billed items

Billed Item

Description

Billing Factor

Billing Formula

(Mandatory) DB instance

Instance specifications include vCPUs, memory, and the number of nodes.

vCPUs, memory, and number of nodes

Instance types of different specifications provide different compute and storage.

Specifications unit price x Required duration x Number of nodes

For details about the unit price, see "Specification Price" in GaussDB(for MySQL) Pricing Details.

(Mandatory) Storage

Purchased storage in advance is billed at a yearly/monthly basis.

Storage space, which is billed based on the unified standard

Storage space unit price x Storage space x Required duration

For details about the unit price, see "Storage Space Price" in GaussDB(for MySQL) Pricing Details.

(Mandatory) Backup space

After the free backup space is used up, charges are applied based on the backup space pricing details. Pricing is listed on a per-hour basis, but bills are calculated based on the actual usage duration.

Backup space, which is billed based on the unified standard

Backup space unit price x Billed backup space x Billed duration

For details about the unit price, see "Backup Storage Price" in GaussDB(for MySQL) Pricing Details.

NOTE:

The billed duration refers to the length of time the billed backup space was used for.

(Optional) EIP bandwidth
  • DB instances can be accessed through a public network, and traffic fees are generated accordingly.
  • You are not billed for traffic generated through a private network.

Bandwidth, traffic, and EIP reservation (An EIP is required if a DB instance needs to access the Internet.)

EIP for a pay-per-use DB instance: billed by bandwidth, traffic, or shared bandwidth. You are also billed for IP reservation if you do not bind the EIP to any instance.

Billed by fixed bandwidth

For details, see "By Bandwidth" in GaussDB(for MySQL) Pricing Details.

(Optional) Monitoring by Seconds

One it is enabled, pricing is listed on a per-hour basis, but bills are calculated based on the actual usage duration. GaussDB(for MySQL) provides monitoring every 60 seconds for free.

Monitoring frequency, which is billed based on the unified standard

Unit price of Monitoring by Seconds x Billed duration

For details about the unit price, see Configuring Monitoring by Seconds.

NOTE:

Billed duration: 1s or 5s (If Monitoring by Seconds is enabled, the monitoring interval can be set to 1s or 5s.)

(Optional) HTAP instance

Standard HTAP instances are in OBT and are free.

N/A

N/A

(Optional) Cross-region backup

If cross-region backup is used, you will be billed for the backup space and cross-region dump network traffic.

Backup space and cross-region dump network traffic

For details, see GaussDB(for MySQL) Cross-Region Backup Billed Items.

(Optional) Proxy instance

Proxy instances are free.

N/A

N/A

(Optional) DRS migration

If you use Data Replication Service (DRS) for data migration, you will be billed based on the DRS pricing standard.

For details, see DRS Billing.

For details, see DRS Billing.

If you want to purchase a DB instance with 2 vCPUs, 8 GB of memory, and 2 nodes, the prices will be displayed as follows (excluding storage and backup space prices).

Figure 1 Example prices

The prices include:

Instance specifications (including vCPUs and memory)

The storage and backup space prices are not included. For details about storage and backup prices, see the Product Pricing Details page of the price calculator.

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 Completed time on the Instant Tasks page in the task center.

For example, if you purchased a pay-per-use DB instance at 8:45:30 and deleted it at 8:55:30, you were billed for the 600 seconds from 8:45:30 to 8:55:30.

Billing Examples

Suppose you purchased a pay-per-use DB instance with 2 vCPUs and 8 GB of memory at 10:00:30 on April 18, 2023 and deleted the DB instance on at 10:45:46 on the same day. The DB instance with two nodes used 20 GB storage and 50 GB backup space.

Usage of 2,716 seconds from 10:00:30 to 10:45:46 (between 10:00:30 and 11:00:00)
  • From 10:00:30 to 10:35:00, the backup space was free. From 10:35:00 to 10:45:46, the backup space was billed for 646 seconds.
  • From 10:10:00 to 10:45:46, 1-second monitoring was billed for 2,146 seconds.

You will be billed for all usage periods. GaussDB(for MySQL) instances are billed individually as follows: The prices displayed in the pricing details are 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.

Table 2 Billing formulas

Billed Item

Formula

Unit Price

Instance specifications (vCPUs and memory)

Specifications unit price x Required duration x Number of nodes

See "Specification Price" in GaussDB(for MySQL) Pricing Details.

Storage space

Storage space unit price x Required duration x Storage (GB)

See "Backup Storage Price" in GaussDB(for MySQL) Pricing Details.

Backup space

Backup space unit price x Billed duration x (Backup space – Storage space) (GB)

NOTE:

The billed duration refers to the length of time the billed backup space was used for.

See "Backup Storage Price" in GaussDB(for MySQL) Pricing Details.

EIP bandwidth

Billed by fixed bandwidth

NOTE:

If your pay-per-use EIP has no instance bound, you will be billed for the EIP reservation price.

See EIP Pricing Details.

Enabling Monitoring by Seconds

Unit price of Monitoring by Seconds x Billed duration

For details, see Configuring Monitoring by Seconds.

Figure 2 shows the billing calculation.

When you delete a DB instance, its automated backups are also deleted, but its manual backups are still retained and will incur additional costs.

The price in the figure is for reference only. The actual prices are subject to GaussDB(for MySQL) Pricing Details.

However, the amount due is truncated to the 2nd decimal place. The third and later decimal places are referred to as the truncated amounts.

From June 2021, the amounts before bill generation are no longer truncated. Only the total amount shown in the monthly bill is rounded off to the 2nd decimal place.

  • On the Billing > Bills > Bills page of the Billing Center, the total amount in a monthly bill is slightly higher because the amounts are no longer truncated to the 2nd decimal place.
  • On the Billing > Bills > Bills page of the Billing Center, the amounts shown under Details By Account are rounded off. Therefore, there may be some discrepancies with the amounts shown in the monthly bill. To view the exact amounts (accurate to the 8th decimal place), customers can export the monthly bill in XLSX or CSV format.
Figure 2 Total price for a pay-per-use DB instance in CN-Hong Kong

Price Change After Specification Change

If you change the instance 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.

Suppose 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. Two billing records were generated from 9:00:00 to 10:00:00.

  • 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 Life cycle 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 there is no top-up account with sufficient balance and no other payment method configured to pay for the resources used, 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 status turns to Frozen and it 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, your instance will be released, and data cannot be restored.

  • During the retention period, you cannot access and use your DB instance but data in the DB instance will be retained. The retention period for 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 Huawei Cloud International website is 15 days.
  • For details about top-up, see Topping Up an Account.
Parent topic: Billing Modes