Help Center/ Elastic Load Balance/ Service Overview/ Billing (Dedicated Load Balancers)
Updated on 2024-08-14 GMT+08:00
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Billing (Dedicated Load Balancers)

This section describes how dedicated load balancers will be billed.

Billing Item

You will be charged for how many LCUs you use and how long you use your load balancers as described in Table 1.

For details about the pricing, see ELB Price Calculator. Resources vary in different regions. Resources may vary by region, see actual prices shown on the console.

Table 1 Billing items

Billing Item

Description

LCU

You are charged based on the number of load balancer capacity units (LCUs) used by a dedicated load balancer per hour.

Load balancer

You are charged for how long you use each load balancer. If the load balancer is used for less than 1 hour, you will be charged for the actual duration, accurate to seconds.
  • An LCU measures the dimensions on which a dedicated load balancer routes the traffic. See LCU price in LCU Pricing.
  • If you deploy a dedicated load balancer in multiple AZs, its performance will multiply by the number of AZs. The number of LCUs is calculated as follows: Number of LCUs = LCUs of the selected specifications x Number of the selected AZs.
  • For details about AZs, see Region and AZ.

Billing Mode

The billing items of dedicated load balancers vary by billing mode. For details, see Table 2.

Table 2 Varied billing items by billing mode

Billing Mode

Description

Specifications

LCU Price

Load Balancer Price

Pay-per-use

You are charged for how long you use each load balancer.

Elastic

Supported

Supported

Fixed

Supported

Not supported
  • √ indicates that the billing item is involved. × indicates that the billing item is not involved.
  • If you bind an EIP to a dedicated load balancer, you will also be charged for the EIP and the bandwidth used by the EIP.

    For details about EIP pricing, see Elastic IP Pricing Details.

Constraints

The elastic specifications are available in CN Southwest-Guiyang1, CN East-Shanghai1, CN-Hong Kong, and AP-Singapore. They will soon be available in other regions.

LCU Pricing

An LCU measures the dimensions on which a dedicated load balancer routes the traffic. See LCU price in Table 3.

The unit price of LCU varies depending on the billing mode and specifications. See the actual price of LCU on the console. LCU price (USD) = Unit price x Number of LCUs x Usage duration.

Table 3 LCU pricing

Billing Mode

Specifications

Application Scenario

Description

Pay-per-use

Elastic

For fluctuating traffic

You are charged for how many LCUs you use.

Fixed

For stable traffic

You are charged for the LCUs based on each fixed specification you select.

LCU Billing for Elastic Specifications

An LCU has four dimensions: new connections, maximum concurrent connections, processed traffic, and rule evaluations.

You can calculate the number of LCUs by taking the maximum LCUs consumed across the four dimensions.

The number of LCUs is rounded up to the nearest integer.

Table 4 LCU dimensions

Dimension

Description

New connections

Number of new connections per second.

Maximum concurrent connections

The maximum number of concurrent connections that a load balancer can handle per minute.

Processed traffic

The amount of data transferred through a load balancer in GBs.

Rule evaluations

(application load balancing)

The product of the number of rules processed by a load balancer and the number of queries per second (QPS).

The first 10 processed rules are free.

  • When there are more than 10 processed rules, the number of rule evaluations is calculated as follows: Rule evaluations = QPS x (Number of processed rules – 10).
  • When there are 10 or less processed rules, the number of rule evaluations is equal to the QPS.

Table 5 lists the LCU performance supported by different protocols.

Table 5 LCU performance supported by different protocols

Protocol

New connections per second

Maximum concurrent connections per minute

Processed traffic

Rule evaluations per second

TCP

800

100,000

1 GB

N/A

UDP

400

50,000

1 GB

N/A

HTTP/HTTPS

25

3,000

1 GB

1,000

A pricing example for a network load balancer

Assume your network load balancer establishes 1,000 new TCP connections per second, each lasting for three minutes, and the traffic processed by your load balancer is 1,000 KB per second.

The unit price of LCU in the current region is $0.00833 USD/hour. The LCU price is calculated as the table shown below.

Table 6 LCU calculation

Dimension

Example

LCUs

Rounded Up LCUs

New connections per second

1,000 new TCP connections

1000 ÷ 800 = 1.25

2

Maximum concurrent connections per minute

The maximum established concurrent connections are calculated as:

1,000 new HTTP/HTTPS connections per second x 60s x 3 minutes = 180,000 connections

180000 ÷ 100000 = 1.8

2

Processed traffic per hour

1,000 KB/s x 60s x 60 minutes = 3.6 GB

3.6 ÷ 1 = 3.6

4

In this example, the traffic dimension consumes the most LCUs (4 LCUs). Therefore, the LCU price is calculated based on the number of LCUs converted from the traffic.

The total LCU price for using this network load balancer for 2 hours is calculated as follows:

LCU price = Unit price x Number of LCUs x Usage duration = $0.00833 USD/hour x 4 LCUs x 2 hours =$0.06664 USD

A pricing example for an application load balancer

Assume your application load balancer establishes 1,000 new HTTP/HTTPS connections per second, each lasting for three minutes. A client sends an average of 400 requests per second and the traffic processed by this load balancer is 1,000 KB per second. You have configured 20 forwarding rules for your load balancer to route your client requests.

The unit price of LCU in the current region is $0.00833 USD/hour. The LCU price is calculated as the table shown below.

Table 7 LCU calculation

Dimension

Example

LCUs

Rounded Up LCUs

New connections per second

1,000 new connections

1000 ÷ 25 = 40

40

Maximum concurrent connections per minute

The maximum established concurrent connections are calculated as:

1,000 new HTTP/HTTPS connections per second x 60s x 3 minutes = 180,000 connections

180000 ÷ 3000 = 60

60

Processed traffic per hour

1,000 KB/s x 60s x 60 minutes = 3.6 GB

3.6 ÷ 1= 3.6

4

Rule evaluations per second

Rule evaluations are calculated as:

Rule evaluations = QPS x (Number of processed rules – 10) = 400 x (20 – 10) = 4,000

4000 ÷ 1000 = 4

4

In this example, the maximum concurrent dimension consumes the most LCUs (60 LCUs). Therefore, the LCU price is calculated based on the number of LCUs converted from the maximum concurrent connections.

The total LCU price for using this application load balancer for 2 hours is calculated as follows:

LCU price = Unit price x Number of LCUs x Usage duration = $0.00833 USD/hour x 60 LCUs x 2 hours = $0.9996 USD

LCU Billing for Fixed Specifications

You are charged for the LCUs based on each fixed specification you select. You can select either application load balancing (HTTP/HTTPS) or network load balancing (TCP/UDP), or both.

You can refer to Specifications of Dedicated Load Balancers for each fixed specification and select a fixed specification that best meets your service requirements.

Pay-per-use

The following table lists the converted number of LCUs of each fixed specification.

Table 8 Converted number of LCUs of each fixed specification

Type

LCUs in an AZ (TCP/UDP)

LCUs in an AZ (HTTP/HTTPS)

Small I

10

10

Small II

20

20

Medium I

40

40

Medium II

80

100

Large I

200

200

Large II

400

400
  • LCU quantity refers to the number of LCUs corresponding to a specification in a single AZ.
  • If you select multiple AZs for a load balancer, the number of LCUs is calculated as follows: Number of LCUs = LCUs of the selected specification x Number of the selected AZs.

Load Balancer Price

You are charged for how long you use each load balancer. If the load balancer is used for less than 1 hour, you will be charged for the actual duration, accurate to seconds. The billing cycle is from the time when the dedicated load balancer is created to the time when it is deleted.

Only load balancers with elastic specifications in pay-per-use billing mode are charged.

Changing Specifications or Billing Modes

You can change the specifications or billing mode of a dedicated load balancer.

Table 9 lists the specifications that you can change. For details about how to change the specifications of a dedicated load balancer, see Changing the Specifications of a Dedicated Load Balancer.

Table 9 Supported change options for a pay-per-use load balancer

Billing Mode

Specifications

Change to Elastic

Change to Fixed

Adding Load Balancing Type

Removing Load Balancing Type

Upgrading Specifications

Downgrading Specifications

Pay-per-use

Elastic

N/A

Supported

Supported

Supported

N/A

N/A

Fixed

Supported

N/A

Supported

Supported

Supported

Supported

Table 10 describes whether you can change the billing mode of a load balancer.

Table 10 Changing the billing mode

Billing Mode

Specifications

Description

Pay-per-use

Elastic

Cannot be changed.

Fixed

For details, see Changing the Billing Mode or Bandwidth Billing Option

Renewal

You can renew a dedicated load balancer in either of the following ways:

  • On the ELB console, locate the load balancer and click More > Renew in the Operation column.
  • On the Renewals page of the Billing Center, renew the subscription. For details, see Renewal Management.

Expiration and Overdue Payment

If your account is in arrears, you can view the arrears details in the Billing Center. To prevent your load balancers from being stopped or released, top up your account in a timely manner. For details, see Repaying Outstanding Amount.

If you do not renew your load balancers in time, your account will be frozen and your load balancers will be kept in retention.

During this period, the load balancers cannot be used. For details, see What Functions Will Become Unavailable If a Load Balancer Is Frozen?

If you still do not complete the renewal or payment after the retention period ends, your data stored in cloud services will be deleted and the resources will be released.