Billing for the observability capability of ACK

This topic describes the observability capability of Container Service for Kubernetes (ACK) and its billing method.

Billing for Managed Service for Prometheus

To use Managed Service for Prometheus to collect monitoring data, you must select and enable Cluster Monitoring. Cluster Monitoring of Managed Service for Prometheus includes ACK Cluster Monitoring Pro Edition and ACK Cluster Monitoring Basic Edition. The following section describes the billing methods of these two editions.

Important

Currently, only ACK Pro clusters support ACK Cluster Monitoring Pro Edition. For other types of clusters, ACK Cluster Monitoring Basic Edition is used by default. ACK is gradually adding support for ACK Cluster Monitoring Pro Edition for other types of clusters.

Category	ACK Cluster Monitoring Basic Edition	ACK Cluster Monitoring Pro Edition
Billing of basic metrics	When you create a cluster, the basic monitoring metrics that are enabled by default are provided free of charge. If you modify the default settings, additional fees are generated.	When you create a cluster, the enabled basic metrics are billed based on the number of nodes by default. If you modify the default settings, additional fees are generated. For more information, see Container Monitoring billing.
Billing of custom metrics	You are charged for custom metrics that are reported by plug-ins that are installed in your cluster, such as ack-net-exporter, ack-sysom-monitor, migrate-controller, Knative, ack-arena, and ack-fluid. All metrics except basic metrics are classified as custom metrics. Custom metrics are billed based on the reported data and storage usage. For more information, see Prometheus instance billing.
Billing of cluster resources	Provides non-managed agents. By default, each agent occupies 3 CPU cores and 4 GB of memory. You need to manage the agents by yourself. Additional resource consumption costs are generated.	Managed agents are used to implement monitoring, and no additional resource fees are generated.

Compared with ACK Cluster Monitoring Basic Edition, ACK Cluster Monitoring Pro Edition provides various built-in Grafana monitoring dashboards, default alert rules for ACK components, and Remote Write and data shipping capabilities (through EventBridge). For more information about the benefits of ACK Cluster Monitoring Pro Edition, see Differences between the Basic Edition and Pro Edition.

For more information about how to check whether the reported metrics are basic metrics, see Container cluster basic metrics. All metrics not included in the basic metrics are considered custom metrics. This feature is continuously updated, so new custom metrics are progressively added.

Billing for ARMS Application Monitoring

If Application Real-Time Monitoring Service (ARMS) is enabled for applications deployed in ACK clusters, such as Java Application Monitoring, Python Application Monitoring, and Go Application Monitoring, fees are generated. These fees are billed based on the billing items of ARMS Application Monitoring. For more information, see Billing.

Billing for Simple Log Service

When you use Simple Log Service to process logs in ACK clusters (such as audit logs, control plane logs, and container logs (pod logs)), fees are generated. These fees are calculated based on usage and are billed directly by Simple Log Service. For more information, see Billing overview.

Observability features of clusters

The following table describes which features use the cluster observability capability and which components report the generated observability data.

Note

You can check Container cluster basic metrics to confirm whether the monitoring metrics collected by Managed Service for Prometheus are basic metrics. If a metric is not listed in Container cluster basic metrics, it is considered a custom metric.

Module	Feature (Observable)	Alibaba Cloud observability service	Data reporting component
Log monitoring of the control plane	Collect control plane component logs of ACK managed clusters	Simple Log Service	ACK managed clusters
CoreDNS log monitoring	Analyze and monitor CoreDNS logs	Simple Log Service	CoreDNS
Monitoring for the audit logs feature of API servers	Work with cluster API Server auditing Collect control plane component logs of ACK managed clusters	Simple Log Service	API Server
Container auditing	Use Container Behavior Auditing Collect control plane component logs of ACK managed clusters	Simple Log Service	ack-advanced-audit
Container log monitoring	Collect container logs from ACK clusters Collect control plane component logs of ACK managed clusters	Simple Log Service	logtail-ds component
Application Monitoring	Java Application Monitoring	Application Real-Time Monitoring Service	ack-onepilot
	Python Application Monitoring	Application Real-Time Monitoring Service	ack-onepilot
	Go Application Monitoring	Application Real-Time Monitoring Service	ack-onepilot
Control plane component monitoring	View control plane component dashboards	Managed Service for Prometheus	API Server
		Managed Service for Prometheus	kube-controller-manager
		Managed Service for Prometheus	cloud-controller-manager
		Managed Service for Prometheus	kube-scheduler
		Managed Service for Prometheus	etcd
Network monitoring	Use Managed Service for Prometheus to improve the observability of Ingress	Managed Service for Prometheus	Nginx Ingress Controller
Network monitoring	CoreDNS component monitoring	Managed Service for Prometheus	CoreDNS
Storage	Overview of container storage monitoring	Managed Service for Prometheus	csi-plugin storage-operator
GPU	GPU monitoring	Managed Service for Prometheus	ack-gpu-exporter
Cluster topology monitoring	Cluster topology monitoring	What is Application Monitoring eBPF Edition?	ack-arms-cmonitor
Cluster basic monitoring	Use Managed Service for Prometheus for monitoring	Managed Service for Prometheus	The Prometheus agent is provided by Managed Service for Prometheus. The cluster basic monitoring data consists of the following data: The status data of the Kubernetes object is provided by the kube-state-metrics component. The basic monitoring data of the cluster nodes is provided by the node-exporter component. The basic container monitoring data from kubelet at the container engine layer of each node in the cluster and the ACK Virtual Node component.
		Managed Service for Prometheus
		Managed Service for Prometheus
Cost management suite	Enable cost insights	Managed Service for Prometheus	ack-cost-exporter
Cost management suite	Resource profiling	Managed Service for Prometheus	ack-koordinator (ack-slo-manager)
Scheduling	QoS aware scheduling	Managed Service for Prometheus
Scheduling	Best practices for colocation of multi-types workloads	Managed Service for Prometheus
Events and alerts monitoring	Event monitoring	Simple Log Service	ack-node-problem-detector
Events and alerts monitoring	Container service alert management	Simple Log Service Managed Service for Prometheus CloudMonitor	alicloud-monitor-controller
Kernel-level container monitoring	Kernel-level container monitoring based on SysOM	Managed Service for Prometheus	ack-sysom-monitor
Kernel-level container monitoring	Use SysOM to locate container memory issues	Managed Service for Prometheus	ack-sysom-monitor
Network diagnosis	Network diagnosis	Managed Service for Prometheus	net-exporter
Backup center	Use Managed Service for Prometheus to monitor the backup center and configure alerting	Managed Service for Prometheus	migrate-controller
Knative	View the Knative monitoring dashboard	Managed Service for Prometheus	Knative
Auto Scaling	Horizontal pod scaling based on Managed Service for Prometheus metrics	Managed Service for Prometheus	ack-alibaba-cloud-metrics-adapter
Auto Scaling	Enable Managed Service for Prometheus for AHPA	Managed Service for Prometheus	AHPA controller
Cloud-native AI suite	Configure the Arena client	Managed Service for Prometheus	ack-arena
Cloud-native AI suite	Elastic datasets	Managed Service for Prometheus	ack-fluid