Yearly/Monthly Billing

If you expect to use resources for a longer period, you can save money by selecting yearly/monthly billing. This section describes billing rules of yearly/monthly GeminiDB Cassandra resources.

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, such as scientific research projects and large-scale events.
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
Instance specifications	Instance specifications, including vCPUs and memory.
Storage space	If the actual storage usage exceeds your purchased storage, you will be billed for additional storage on a pay-per-use basis.
Backup space	GeminiDB Cassandra provides backup storage up to 100% of your provisioned database storage at no additional charge. 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.
(Optional) Public network bandwidth	GeminiDB Cassandra instances are accessible from public networks, and you are billed for the generated public network traffic, but not for private network traffic.

If you want to purchase a 3-node (specifications of each node: 2 vCPUs | 8 GB) GeminiDB Cassandra instance with 100 GB of storage space. At the bottom of the instance buying page, price details (excluding the backup space fee) will be displayed.

Figure 1 Example price

The price includes:

Selected specifications for your instance
Storage space

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

Billed Usage Period

A yearly/monthly GeminiDB Cassandra instance is billed for the purchased duration (UTC+8). The billing starts 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 GeminiDB Cassandra instance 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 GeminiDB Cassandra instance (instance specifications: 2 vCPUs | 8 GB; nodes: 3; storage: 100 GB; backup space: 110 GB (100 GB for free)) 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:

March 08, 2023, 15:50:04 to April 08, 2023, 23:59:59
April 08, 2023, 23:59:59 to May 08, 2023, 23:59:59
- From April 08, 2023, 23:59:59 to May 01, 2023, 23:59:59, 50 GB of free backup space was used.
- From May 01, 2023, 23:59:59 to May 08, 2023, 23:59:59, another 10 GB of backup space was used, which was billed for 168 hours.

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

**Table 2** Formulas for billing yearly/monthly GeminiDB Cassandra resources
Resource	Formula	Unit Price
Instance specifications (including vCPUs and memory)	Unit price of the instance specifications x Required duration x Number of nodes	For details about the unit price, see Cluster CPU/Memory on Product Pricing Details
Storage space	Storage space unit price x Required duration x Storage space (GB)	For details about the unit price, see Storage Space on Product Pricing Details.
Backup space	Backup space unit price x Required duration x (Backup space – Storage space) (GB) NOTE: The billed duration refers to the length of time the billed backup space was used for.	For details about the unit price, see Backup Storage Space on Product Pricing Details.
Public network bandwidth	Billed by fixed bandwidth	For details, see Product Pricing Details.

Figure 2 shows how the total price is calculated.

Prices in the figure are just examples. Actual prices are subject to Product Pricing Details.

Figure 2 Total price for a yearly/monthly GeminiDB Cassandra instance

Price Change After Specification Change

If the specifications of a yearly/monthly GeminiDB Cassandra instance 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 GeminiDB Cassandra instance specifications, you need to pay the difference in price.
If you downgrade your GeminiDB Cassandra instance specifications, Huawei Cloud will refund you the difference.

You are not advised to downgrade your GeminiDB Cassandra instance to a lower specification because the instance performance may be affected. Suppose you purchased a yearly/monthly GeminiDB Cassandra instance (2 vCPUs | 8 GB and 3 nodes) on April 08, 2023 and upgraded the instance specifications to 4 vCPUs | 16 GB and 3 nodes on April 18, 2023. The price for the original specifications was $587.06 USD/month, and that for the new specifications was $981.62 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 number of days in each calendar month. In this example, Remaining period = 12 (Remaining days in April)/30 (Maximum number of days in April) + 8 (Remaining days in May)/31 (Maximum number of days in May) = 0.6581. Cost of upgrade = $981.62 USD × 0.6581 – $587.06 USD × 0.6581 = $259.66 USD.

For more details, see Pricing of a Changed Specification.

Impact of Expiration

Figure 3 shows the statuses a yearly/monthly GeminiDB Cassandra instance can go through throughout its lifecycle. After a GeminiDB Cassandra instance is purchased, it enters the valid period and runs normally during this period. If the instance 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 GeminiDB Cassandra instance

Expiration Reminder

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

Impact of Expiration

If your yearly/monthly GeminiDB Cassandra instance 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 GeminiDB Cassandra instance but cannot:

Change instance specifications.
Change the billing mode from yearly/monthly to pay-per-use.
Unsubscribe from it.

If the yearly/monthly GeminiDB Cassandra instance 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 GeminiDB Cassandra instance while it is in the retention period.

If the yearly/monthly GeminiDB Cassandra instance is not renewed by the time the retention period ends, it will be released and data cannot be restored.