Billable items

This topic describes the resource metering method, billable items, and billing formulas of fully managed Flink. This topic also describes the costs of other cloud services that are required to deploy and use fully managed Flink. You can refer to this topic to estimate the resources and costs required to deploy fully managed Flink for your business.

Metering method

The billing unit of fully managed Flink is compute unit (CU), which is a unit of measurement for computing resources. One CU is equal to 1 CPU core, 4 GiB of memory, and 20 GB of local storage. The local storage stores information, such as logs and checkpoints. The number of CUs consumed reflects the resources used by Realtime Compute for Apache Flink. The number of CUs consumed by a Realtime Compute for Apache Flink deployment varies based on the queries per second (QPS) of input data streams, computing complexity, and input data distribution of the deployment. You can estimate the number of CUs that you need to purchase based on your business scale and the computing capability of Realtime Compute for Apache Flink. The following table describes the processing capability of CUs in Realtime Compute for Apache Flink.

Use case

Processing capability

Simple streaming stress testing

The operations include filtering and cleansing.

Each CU can process 40,000 to 55,000 data records per second.

Complex streaming stress testing

The operations include aggregation and complex user-defined function (UDF) calculation.

Each CU can process 5,000 to 10,000 data records per second.

Note

The preceding estimate applies only to the internal processing capability of Realtime Compute for Apache Flink. The external data read and write capabilities are not included. The external data read and write efficiency may affect the computing capability estimate of Realtime Compute for Apache Flink.
- If you want to use Realtime Compute for Apache Flink to read data from Simple Log Service but the query quota of Simple Log Service is limited, the overall computing capability of Realtime Compute for Apache Flink is subject to the capability allowed by Simple Log Service.
- If the number of connections or transactions per second (TPS) is limited for the ApsaraDB RDS database that Realtime Compute for Apache Flink references, the throughput of Realtime Compute for Apache Flink is limited by the throttling of the ApsaraDB RDS database.
Window functions are complex operations and consume more CUs than simple operations. If your applications require the use of window functions, we recommend that you purchase at least four CUs.

The following table describes the billable items of fully managed Flink.

Billable item	Description
Management resources	When you create a workspace, the system deploys a console for the workspace. The console and its components consume about 2 CUs for management.
Computing resources	Computing resources are the resources that are consumed when you perform computing tasks, and are metered in CUs. You are charged for the CUs based on the subscription or pay-as-you-go billing method.

The following table describes how the fees for each billing method are calculated for individual workspaces.

Billing method	Billing formula
Subscription	Workspace fee = (CUs consumed for management + CUs consumed for computing) × Monthly price × Subscription period
Pay-as-you-go	Workspace fee = Sum of computing resource usage per minute in an hour/60 × Hourly price + Management resource usage in an hour/60 × Number of CUs consumed for management × Hourly price

Note

A pay-as-you-go workspace is billed by minute. The billing cycle is 1 hour.
The number of CUs consumed for management is fixed to 2.
The fee calculated by using the preceding formula is the fee for one workspace of fully managed Flink. You can purchase multiple workspaces for an Alibaba Cloud account. When you settle bills for an account, you must pay fees based on the total fees of multiple workspaces.

Billing rules for supporting services

Fully managed Flink relies on several other services and can be used together with some services to extend its capabilities. Aside from the service fee for fully managed Flink, you may also be charged for other services as described in the following table.

Alibaba Cloud service	Billing rule
VPC	To activate fully managed Flink, you must select a virtual private cloud (VPC) in the region in which fully managed Flink resides. For more information, see Billing.
OSS	Object Storage Service (OSS) is used to store information about Flink deployments, such as checkpoints, savepoints, logs, and JAR packages. For more information, see Billing overview.
SLB	Server Load Balancer (SLB) is a necessary network connection component that is used to access the Realtime Compute for Apache Flink console by using a browser. After you activate fully managed Flink, the SLB service is automatically activated. For more information about SLB billing methods, see Pay-by-LCU (new). Important The SLB replacement solution was released in different regions from September 8, 2023. After the replacement, you do not need to separately activate the SLB service when you purchase fully managed Flink, and no SLB fees are incurred. The SLB replacement solution is gradually conducted for existing workspaces. For more information, see [Feature updates] September 8, 2023: The SLB replacement solution for fully managed Flink is released. You cannot delete or modify the SLB instance that is automatically created in this process. You must ensure that the SLB service does not have overdue payments. Otherwise, the SLB instance may be released due to overdue payments. As a result, the fully managed Flink workspace becomes unavailable. For more information about the overdue payments of the SLB service, see Overdue payments. The SLB instance that is used by fully managed Flink cannot be manually released. The SLB instance is released when you release fully managed Flink.
ARMS	After you activate a fully managed Flink workspace, Application Real-Time Monitoring Service (ARMS) is automatically activated to provide Prometheus Service Pro Edition. For more information about the billing of ARMS, see Pay-as-you-go. Important The Prometheus instance is released when you release fully managed Flink. If you do not want to use the Prometheus instance, you can log on to the ARMS console to release the instance at any time. For more information, see Discard or restore metrics. After the Prometheus instance is released, you can no longer troubleshoot issues based on the metrics in the console of fully managed Flink or configure monitoring and alerts. ARMS collects the metrics of deployments in fully managed Flink every 30 seconds. The metric collection frequency affects the monitoring accuracy and cost. A high collection frequency provides high monitoring accuracy at a higher cost.