This topic describes the billing rules of Container Service for Kubernetes (ACK) Pro clusters.
Billable items
Billing of cluster management
The cluster management fee varies based on the cluster type. ACK clusters are integrated with the virtualization, storage, networking, and security capabilities of Alibaba Cloud. These capabilities facilitate the management of high-performance and scalable applications that are deployed in ACK clusters. These capabilities also simplify the operations that are required to create or scale clusters. This way, you can focus on the development and management of containerized applications.
Cluster management supports the pay-as-you-go billing method. ACK charges you USD 0.09/hour per cluster.
Billing of cloud services
You are charged for the Alibaba Cloud services that are used by your ACK Pro cluster based on the billing rules of these services.
Cloud service | Activation | Description | Subscription | Resource plan | Billing rule |
Elastic Compute Service (ECS) | Required | This service can be used to create nodes in ACK clusters. For more information, see What is ECS?. | Supported | Not supported | |
Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) | Required | This service can be used to build networks and create routing rules for ACK clusters. For more information, see What is a VPC?. | Not supported | Not supported | |
Classic Load Balancer (CLB) | Required | This service provides load balancing for ACK clusters. For more information, see What is CLB?. | Not supported | Not supported | |
Auto Scaling | Required | This service enables ACK clusters to support auto scaling and automatically creates nodes in scale-out activities. For more information, see What is Auto Scaling?. | Not supported | Not supported | |
Container Registry | Recommended | This service ensures the security of cloud-native applications that are fully managed on the cloud and allows you to manage the lifecycle of these applications. For more information, see What is Container Registry?. | Supported Note Container Registry Enterprise Edition instances support only the subscription billing method. For more information, see Billing of Container Registry Enterprise Edition instances. | Not supported | |
Elastic IP Address (EIP) | Recommended | This service enables Internet access for cloud resources. For more information, see What is EIP?. | Not supported | Not supported | |
Elastic Container Instance | Recommended | This service is used to host workloads in ACK clusters. For more information, see What is Elastic Container Instance?. | Not supported | Not supported | |
Alibaba Cloud Service Mesh (ASM) | Recommended | This service allows you to manage the network traffic of applications in multiple ACK clusters by using service meshes. For more information, see What is ASM?. | Not supported | Supported | |
Log Service | Recommended | This service allows you to collect and query the log data of ACK components and applications. For more information, see What is Log Service?. | Not supported | Supported. Note Select resource plans based on your business requirements. For more information, see Purchase a resource plan. | |
CloudMonitor | Recommended | This service allows you to monitor the status of nodes and applications in ACK clusters. For more information, see What is CloudMonitor?. | Not supported | Supported | - |
Prometheus Service | Recommended | This service allows you to monitor ACK clusters and generate alerts when exceptions are detected. For more information, see What is Prometheus Service?. | Supported Note For more information, see Billing overview. | Not supported | |
NAT Gateway | Optional | This service enables ACK clusters to communicate with the Internet and pull images over the Internet. For more information, see What is NAT Gateway?. | Not supported | Supported. Note Select resource plans based on your business requirements. For more information, see NAT resource plans. | |
Security Center (SAS) | Optional | This service allows you to monitor the security events of application runtimes in ACK clusters and generate alerts when exceptions are detected. For more information, see What is Security Center?. | Not supported | Not supported | |
Apsara File Storage NAS (NAS) | Optional | This service allows you to store application data in NAS file systems. For more information, see What is NAS?. | Not supported | Supported. Note Select resource plans based on your business requirements. For more information, see Purchase resource plans. | Billing of General-purpose NAS file systems and Billing of Extreme NAS file systems |
Object Storage Service (OSS) | Optional | This service allows you to store application data in OSS buckets. For more information, see What is OSS?. | Not supported | Supported. Note Select resource plans based on your business requirements. For more information, see Purchase resource plans. | |
Key Management Service (KMS) | Optional | This service allows you to manage application Secrets and encrypt Secrets for ACK Pro clusters. For more information, see What is Key Management Service?. | Not supported | Not supported | |
Hybrid Backup Recovery (HBR) | Optional | This service provides data backup, disaster recovery, and policy-based archive management. For more information, see What is HBR?. | Supported | Supported. Note Select resource plans based on your business requirements. For more information, see Purchase resource plans. |
Overdue payments
If your account balance is insufficient, the payment for your ACK Pro cluster becomes overdue. In this case, you cannot access the API server of the cluster. However, pods can still run on cluster nodes. Your ACK Pro cluster is suspended if you do not top up your account within 15 days after a payment becomes overdue. In this case, the nodes are removed from your cluster, and the cluster and pods are deleted, but the nodes are not released. The containers that are released due to cluster deletion cannot be restored.
Billing cycle
The billing cycle of ACK Pro cluster management is 1 hour. You can view the billing details of the previous hour in the ACK console. The service fee is automatically deducted from your Alibaba Cloud account after bills are issued. A bill is issued within 10 to 30 minutes after the current billing cycle ends. After a bill is issued, the fee is automatically deducted from your Alibaba Cloud account if your account balance is sufficient.
If you create a cluster less than 30 minutes before the end of a billing cycle, the cluster is not billed during the current billing cycle. For example, the following plug-ins are automatically installed when the system creates a cluster:
You create an ACK Pro cluster at 10:15:00. The cluster is billed during the billing cycle that ends at 11:00:00. The first bill is issued between 11:10:00 and 11:30:00.
You create an ACK Pro cluster at 10:50:00. The cluster is not billed during the billing cycle that ends at 11:00:00. Instead, the cluster is billed during the next billing cycle that ends at 12:00:00. The first bill is issued between 12:10:00 and 12:30:00.
View your bills
For more information about how to view your bills, see View your bills.