Yearly/Monthly

In the yearly/monthly billing mode, you pay before using resources. It is suitable if you need stable resources and want lower costs. You can pre-purchase CSS resources at discounted prices. This section describes the billing rules for yearly/monthly CSS clusters.

Application Scenarios

If you want to ensure resource stability over a certain period of time, yearly/monthly billing is a good choice for the following types of workloads:

Long-term workloads with stable resource requirements, such as official websites, online malls, and blogs.
Long-term projects: For long-term projects, the yearly/monthly billing mode ensures stable resource usage throughout the project period.
Workloads with predictable traffic bursts, for example, e-commerce promotions or festivals.
Workloads with high data security requirements

Billed Items

You are billed for the following items on a yearly/monthly basis.

**Table 1** Items billed on a yearly/monthly basis
Billing Item	Description
Node specifications	vCPUs and memory
Node storage	Disk storage type and capacity of the node storage
EIP bandwidth	If you enable public network access or Kibana public network access for a yearly/monthly cluster, the EIP will be billed by bandwidth on a yearly/monthly basis.

If you want to purchase a cluster with 40 GB high I/O nodes and enable Kibana public access, the prices will be displayed on the Confirm Configuration page, as shown in Figure 1.

Figure 1 Example prices

The price includes:

Node flavor (including vCPUs and memory)
Node storage
Kibana public network bandwidth

Billed Usage Period

A yearly/monthly cluster is billed for the purchased duration. The billing starts from when you activated or renewed the subscription, and ends at 23:59:59 of the expiry date.

For example, if you purchased a one-month cluster on March 08, 2023, 15:50:04, the billed usage period is from March 08, 2023, 15:50:04 to April 08, 2023, 23:59:59.

Billing Examples

Suppose you purchased a one-month cluster on March 08, 2023, 15:50:04, and renewed the subscription for one more month before the initial subscription expired. That would include two usage periods:

Billed usage period 1: March 08, 2023, 15:50:04 to April 08, 2023, 23:59:59.
Billed usage period 2: April 08, 2023, 23:59:59 to May 08, 2023, 23:59:59.

You will be billed for both usage periods. CSS resources are billed individually as follows:

**Table 2** Formulas for billing yearly/monthly clusters
Resource	Formula	Unit Price
Node specifications	Unit price of node flavors x Required duration	For details, see Flavor Price in CSS Pricing Details.
Node storage	Unit price of the node storage x Required duration	For details, see Storage Price in CSS Pricing Details.
EIP bandwidth	Tiered pricing based on fixed bandwidth. 0 Mbit/s to 5 Mbit/s (included): billed at a fixed unit price per Mbit/s Greater than 5 Mbit/s: billed at a different price per Mbit/s	For details, see Bandwidth Price in CSS Pricing Details.

Figure 2 shows the billing calculation.

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

Figure 2 Total price for a yearly/monthly cluster

Price Change After Specification Change

If the specifications of a yearly/monthly cluster no longer meet your needs, you can change the specifications on the console. The system will recalculate the price and either bill or refund you the difference.

If you upgrade your cluster specifications, you need to pay the difference in price.
If you downgrade your cluster specifications, Huawei Cloud will refund you the difference.

You are not advised to downgrade your cluster to a lower specification because cluster performance may be affected. Suppose you purchased a one-month cluster ess.spec-4u8g (4 vCPU and 8 GiB) on April 8, 2023 and upgraded the specifications to ess.spec-8u16g (8 vCPU and 16 GiB) on April 18, 2023. The price of the old configuration is $136.08 USD/month. The price of the new configuration is $272.3 USD/month. The price difference will be calculated as follows:

Price difference for the specification upgrade = Price for the new specifications × Remaining period - Price for the original specifications × Remaining period

The remaining period in the formula is the remaining days of each calendar month divided by the maximum days of the corresponding calendar month. In this example, Remaining period = 12 (Remaining days in April)/30 (Maximum days in April) + 8 (Remaining days in May)/31 (Maximum days in May) = 0.66, the upgrade fee is calculated as follows: 272.3 x 0.6581 - 136.08 x 0.6581 = $89.65 USD.

For more information, see Pricing of a Changed Specification.

Impact After Expiration

Figure 3 shows the statuses a yearly/monthly cluster can go through throughout its lifecycle. After a cluster is purchased, it enters the valid period and runs normally during this period. If the cluster is not renewed after it expires, before being deleted, it first enters a grace period and then a retention period.

Figure 3 Lifecycle of a yearly/monthly cluster

Expiration Reminder

The system will send you a reminder (by email, SMS, or in-app message) 7 days before a yearly/monthly cluster expires to remind you to renew the subscription.

Impact of Expiration

If your yearly/monthly cluster is not renewed after it expires, it changes to the Expired state and enters a grace period. During the grace period, you can access the cluster but cannot:

Change node specifications
Scale out node Storage
Change the bandwidth size

If the yearly/monthly cluster is not renewed after the grace period ends, its status turns to Frozen and it enters a retention period. You cannot perform any operations on the cluster while it is in the retention period.

If the yearly/monthly cluster is not renewed by the time the retention period ends, the compute resources (vCPUs and memory), EVS disks, and EIPs will be released and data cannot be restored.