Resource Assurance is a service that guarantees the provision of Elastic Compute Service (ECS) resources as your needs change. It allows you to quantify the amount of available resources, reserve resources, plan private pools, and improve your experience when you query, reserve, purchase, and use resources. This topic describes the billing methods of resource assurances and examples of how resource assurances are billed.
Billing methods
You can purchase elasticity assurances or capacity reservations (including immediate capacity reservations, capacity reservations with Savings Plan, and capacity reservations for subscription resources) to reserve resources in different scenarios. After an elasticity assurance or capacity reservation is purchased, Alibaba Cloud reserves resources that match the specified attributes of the elasticity assurance or capacity reservation in a private pool. For more information, see Overview.
| Billing method | Description |
|---|---|
| Elasticity Assurance | Purchased elasticity assurances cannot be released manually. Charges are generated for multiple items:
For more information, see Overview of Elasticity Assurance. |
| Immediate Capacity Reservation | An immediate capacity reservation is billed at the equivalent pay-as-you-go rate of the specified instance type regardless of whether you create pay-as-you-go instances in the reserved capacity. Billing starts the moment the capacity reservation is created, and continues until the capacity reservation is manually released or automatically released upon expiration. Note
For more information, see Overview of Immediate Capacity Reservation. |
Examples
This section provides examples on how elasticity assurances and capacity reservations are billed. The prices on this page are provided for reference only. The actual prices are displayed on the Pricing tab of the Elastic Compute Service (ECS) product page.
Elasticity assurances
- Scenario: An enterprise user purchased an elasticity assurance for one instance and then created an instance in the reserved capacity for a promotion event.
- Fee for the elasticity assurance: USD 100
- Term of the elasticity assurance: one month
- Quantity of instances: 1
- Pay-as-you-go instance price: USD 10 per hour
- Instance usage (in hours): 6 hours
- Billed amount: Total fees = Fee for the elasticity assurance + Fee for pay-as-you-go resources
- Fee for the elasticity assurance: USD 100
- Fee for pay-as-you-go resources: USD 10 per hour × 6 hours = USD 60
- Total fee: USD 100 + USD 60 = USD 160
Note- During the term of an elasticity assurance, you can infinitely create or release pay-as-you-go instances in the reserved capacity.
- Elasticity assurances are automatically released when they expire, but instances created from the reserved capacity are not released.
- These instances continue to function properly and are billed at their respective pay-as-you-go rates.
Immediate capacity reservations
- Scenario: An enterprise user purchased an immediate capacity reservation for two instances. The capacity reservation was provisioned for four hours. Instance A was first created in the reserved capacity, used for three hours, and then released. Then, Instance B was created in the reserved capacity, used for one hour, and then released. ####
- Pay-as-you-go instance price: USD 10 per hour
- Term of the immediate capacity reservation: 4 hours
- Usage of Instance A (in hours): 3 hours
- Usage of Instance B (in hours): 1 hour
- Billed amount: Total fees = Fee for the immediate capacity reservation + Fee for pay-as-you-go resources
Fee for the immediate capacity reservation = Fee for unused capacity + Fee for used capacity. The used capacity accrues no charges.
- Fee for the pay-as-you-go resources of Instance A: USD 10 per hour × 3 hours = USD 30
- Fee for unused capacity for Instance A: USD 10 per hour × 1 hour = USD 10
- Fee for the pay-as-you-go resources of Instance B: USD 10 per hour × 1 hour = USD 10
- Fee for unused capacity for Instance B: USD 10 per hour × 3 hours = USD 30
- Fee for the immediate capacity reservation = USD 10 + USD 30 = USD 40
- Fee for pay-as-you-go resources: USD 30 + USD 10 = USD 40
- Total fee: USD 40 + USD 40 = USD 80
Note As soon as an immediate capacity reservation is created, you are billed for it at the equivalent pay-as-you-go rate of the specified instance type, regardless of whether you use the capacity reservation to create instances. Billing does not stop until the capacity reservation is manually released or automatically released on expiration.- Before an immediate capacity reservation is used to create pay-as-you-go instances, you are charged only for the computing resources of the specified instance type.
- After an immediate capacity reservation is used to create pay-as-you-go instances, you are charged based on the configurations of the instances including their computing resources, disks, and public bandwidth.