When you use an ACK managed cluster or an ACK dedicated cluster, you use resources from other Alibaba Cloud products, such as using ECS as nodes. Therefore, in addition to the management fees for the cluster itself, you also need to pay for these associated cloud resources.
Overview
The following are the main cloud services associated with ACK managed clusters and ACK dedicated clusters:
The cloud services shown in the figure are for reference only. You are billed for the services that you actually activate and use. For information about how to query bills, see Query bills.
Compute resources
ECS nodes
The nodes in ACK managed clusters and ACK dedicated clusters are Elastic Compute Service instances. A node corresponds to an Elastic Compute Service instance and is billed according to Elastic Compute Service billing rules.
The control plane (master nodes) of an ACK managed cluster is managed by ACK and does not incur ECS fees.
You are responsible for maintaining the control plane (master nodes) of an ACK dedicated cluster. These nodes incur ECS fees. When you create an ACK dedicated cluster, you can configure the number and billing method of the corresponding ECS instances.
Billable items
An ECS instance includes resources such as an instance type, an image, and block storage. You may be charged for resources such as the instance type and cloud disks. For detailed billing information, see ECS Billing Overview.
Before you purchase, you can use the Pricing Calculator to estimate ECS costs.
Billing methods
ECS instances support multiple billing methods, such as subscription and pay-as-you-go. You can choose a suitable billing method based on your business scenario. For more information, see ECS Billing Method Overview.
If the billing method of your existing ECS instance does not meet your requirements, you can change the billing method. For detailed instructions, see Convert an ECS instance from subscription to pay-as-you-go and Convert an ECS instance from pay-as-you-go to subscription.
ImportantWhen you convert an ECS instance from pay-as-you-go to subscription, do not select Switch to Subscription. Subscription cloud disks do not support container application restarts, which may affect your services. For more information, see Why do applications fail to restart when the cloud disks attached to an ECS instance in an ACK cluster are converted to the subscription billing method?.
The payment type configured for a node pool determines the billing method for ECS instances that are scaled out in the node pool. To modify this setting, see Edit a node pool.
If your ECS instance uses the subscription billing method, make sure to renew it before the expiration date to prevent the instance from being released, which can disrupt your business operations. For more information, see Renew a subscription ECS instance.
To optimize your ECS costs, you can use a combination of savings plans and preemptible instances. To unsubscribe from an ECS instance, see Unsubscribing from an ECS instance.
Auto scaling
ACK uses Auto Scaling ESS to scale ECS nodes and adjust compute resources based on your business requirements. ESS is free of charge, but you are charged for its associated cloud resources, such as ECS. For more information, see ESS billing information.
ECS nodes that are added by using node scaling are pay-as-you-go by default.
Virtual nodes
ACK supports integrating computing power from Elastic Container InstanceECI and Container Compute ServiceACS by using virtual nodes. ECI Pods and ACS Pods are charged for their resources based on the billing rules of ECI and ACS.
For information about how to use ECI computing power, see Virtual Node. For information about ECI Pod billing, see ECI Billing Overview.
You can use savings plans and preemptible instances to save on ECI instance costs.
For more information about how to access ACS computing power, see Access ACS computing power by using an ACK managed cluster Pro. For information about billing for ACS Pods, see ACS billing.
To use a savings plan to cover ACS computing power charges, see Savings Plan.
Network resources
Basic resources
You use a Virtual Private Cloud to build your cluster network. Creating resources like VPCs and vSwitches is free of charge. However, if you use features such as VPC peering, traffic mirroring, and flow logs, you will incur relevant fees. For more information, see VPC billing overview.
Public network access
By default, ACK clusters do not have public internet access. If you need to connect to the internet, for example, to pull public images, you must use the following cloud services.
Cloud service | Description | Billing |
NAT Gateway | NAT Gateway is a network address translation service that provides NAT proxy (SNAT and DNAT) capabilities. Creating a public NAT Gateway in the cluster's VPC enables internet access. For more information, see the following documents: | A Public NAT Gateway uses EIPs to provide internet access. Therefore, in addition to NAT Gateway fees, you are also charged for the EIPs.
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Elastic IP Address EIP | An EIP is a public IP address that you can purchase and own independently. It provides internet access to its attached resources. In ACK clusters, EIPs are required in the following scenarios:
| EIP billing overview (supports deduction with data transfer plans) |
Load balancing
In ACK clusters, Server Load Balancer is used in the following scenarios.
Cloud service | Description | Billing |
CLB |
Important Starting December 1, 2024, newly purchased clusters will no longer support subscription CLB instances. The renewal deadline for existing subscription instances is December 1, 2026. | |
NLB |
| NLB billing overview (supports deduction with NLB resource plans). |
ALB | ALB Ingress: An ALB Ingress supports Layer 7 load balancing scenarios and provides powerful content-based routing capabilities. You can configure an ALB Ingress to automatically create or associate ALB instances. | ALB billing overview (supports deduction with ALB resource plans). |
API Gateway | APIG Ingress: A new-generation cloud-native gateway from Alibaba Cloud that connects services from multiple clusters to a unified ingress. You can associate an APIG instance with the APIG Ingress component to implement fine-grained traffic management. For more information, see APIG Ingress management. | Cloud Native API Gateway billing overview (supports deduction with CDT resource plans). |
Other products
Cloud service | Description | Billing |
Microservices EngineMSE | You can implement cluster load balancing by using the MSE Ingress component, which is based on Alibaba Cloud's MSE cloud-native gateway. For more information, see MSE Ingress management. | Using the MSE Ingress feature creates an MSE cloud-native gateway. For billing details, see Billing for standard instances. |
Service Mesh ASM | By integrating applications in an ACK cluster with ASM, you can implement unified traffic management, simplify service governance within the mesh, achieve service observability, and reduce the workload for development and operations. For more information, see Service Mesh. | ASM is available in different editions, and mesh management fees are charged. You are also billed for the cloud resources associated with ASM. For more information, see Billing overview. |
Container image management
Container Registry ACR is a secure hosting and efficient distribution platform for OCI-compliant cloud-native artifacts, such as container images and Helm Charts. You can use ACR to manage container images, and pull images from ACR to create workloads in ACK clusters. ACR is available in Personal and Enterprise editions. For more information about billing, see Billing of ACR.
Storage resources
When you run workloads in an ACK cluster, you may have storage requirements such as persistent storage for application data, storage for sensitive and configuration data, and dynamic provisioning of storage resources. ACK implements container storage functionality based on Container Storage Interface (CSI) plugins and uses Alibaba Cloud storage services to provide and manage static or dynamic storage volumes. You are charged for the cloud storage resources that you use.
Cloud service | Description | Billing |
Elastic Block Storage EBS | Cloud disks are block-level storage products that use a distributed multi-replica mechanism, featuring low latency and high reliability. They are suitable for non-shared data application scenarios with high I/O and latency requirements. For more information, see Disk volumes. Important When you convert an ECS instance from pay-as-you-go to subscription, do not select the Switch to Subscription checkbox in the Data Disk section. Subscription cloud disks do not support the restart of containerized applications, which may affect your services. For more information, see Why do applications fail to restart when the cloud disks that are attached to ECS instances in an ACK cluster are converted to the subscription billing method?. | Cloud disks used as storage volumes must be pay-as-you-go. Subscription cloud disks cannot be dynamically attached. For more information, see Block Storage Billing (supports deductions with Storage Capacity Units (SCUs)). |
File Storage NAS | NAS is a distributed file system with shared access and elastic scalability. It is accessed via standard file access protocols like NFS and is suitable for scenarios such as shared data and web application data storage. For more information, see NAS volumes. | NAS billing overview (supports deduction with NAS resource plans). |
Object Storage Service OSS | OSS provides low-cost, massive shared storage space suitable for data that is infrequently modified after being written, such as images and videos. For more information, see OSS volumes. | OSS billing overview (supports deduction with OSS resource plans). |
Observability
ACK observability includes monitoring, logging, and tracing. Monitoring helps you view the operational status of your system. Logging assists with troubleshooting and diagnosing problems. Tracing helps you quickly locate performance bottlenecks and the root causes of exceptions in cross-service calls. For more information, see Observability.
Logging
Simple Log Service SLS collects logs from cluster control plane components, nodes, applications, and containers, and provides features such as search and analysis. For more information, see Log Management.
SLS is billed on a pay-as-you-go basis. Fees are calculated based on the actual usage of each billable item. You can also purchase log resource plans to offset usage. For more information about how SLS is billed, see Billing overview of Log Service.
Monitoring
ACK provides various monitoring functions, including basic monitoring, application monitoring, event monitoring, and Prometheus monitoring. The main cloud services involved are as follows.
Cloud service | Description | Billing |
Managed Service for Prometheus | By enabling Alibaba Cloud Prometheus in an ACK cluster, you can monitor the health of clusters and containers in real time and view monitoring data on Grafana dashboards. For more information, see Connect to and configure Alibaba Cloud Prometheus. | |
ARMS | ARMS Application Monitoring is an application performance management product. You can install the ARMS Application Monitoring component in a cluster to comprehensively monitor your applications. For more information, see Application Monitoring. | |
Cloud Monitor CMS | CMS can be used to monitor the status of cluster nodes and applications, and it supports metric monitoring and alerting for container scenarios. For more information, see [Discontinued] Basic resource monitoring. |
Tracing
To enable trace analysis for the control plane or data plane components of a cluster, you must activate Managed Service for OpenTelemetry. For more information, see Enable trace analysis for control plane components.
Managed Service for OpenTelemetry uses the pay-as-you-go billing method. For more information, see Billing of Managed Service for OpenTelemetry.
Security
Container security
Security Center is used to monitor security events and alerts from application runtimes in the cluster, providing capabilities like baseline checks and vulnerability remediation. For more information, see Use security monitoring.
The free edition of Security Center offers limited features. You can purchase a paid edition as needed. For example:
Security Center performs container runtime risk diagnosis, which requires you to activate the Ultimate of Security Center.
To fix operating system (OS) CVE vulnerabilities in a node pool, you must activate Security Center Ultimate or purchase Vulnerability Fix (Pay-As-You-Go).
For information on how Security Center is billed, see Security Center billing overview.
Access control
Resource Access Management (RAM) is an Alibaba Cloud service for managing user identities and resource access permissions. You can use RAM and the native Kubernetes RBAC mechanism to control permissions based on two dimensions: cloud resources and internal cluster resources. For more information, see Authorization.
RAM is a free product available to all real-name verified Alibaba Cloud accounts.
Key management
Key Management Service KMS is used to manage cluster application keys and to enable the at-rest encryption capability for keys. The related features are as follows:
KMS provides a free default key for cloud product server-side encryption, which can be used directly without purchasing a KMS instance. If you need to use custom master keys, use the Secrets Manager feature, or build an application-layer cryptography solution for your self-built applications, you must purchase a software or hardware key management instance. For more information, see KMS product billing.