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Managed Service for OpenTelemetry:Billing rules

Last Updated:Dec 22, 2023

When you use Managed Service for OpenTelemetry, you are charged for trace reporting and storage and metric storage on a pay-as-you-go basis. This topic describes the billable items and billing rules of Managed Service for OpenTelemetry.

Important

The prices provided in this topic are for your reference only. In actual billing scenarios, the prices displayed on the Pricing page of Managed Service for OpenTelemetry prevail.

Basic concepts

  • Trace: A trace represents the execution of a transaction or process in a distributed system.

  • Span: A span is a call request. Each span represents a named and timed segment that is continuously run in a trace.

  • Metric: A metric represents specific statistical data, such as the request data, response time, or number of exceptions of applications, APIs, or databases.

  • Relationship between a trace and spans: All spans that have the same trace ID within an Alibaba Cloud account constitute a trace. A trace consists of at most 10 spans. Each span can be up to 2 KB in size. The excess part of a span is discarded. For more information about the relationship between a trace and spans, see Terms.

  • Relationship between a trace and a metric: Managed Service for OpenTelemetry provides a metric for each reported trace.

Pay-as-you-go

The billable items of a trace include the reporting and storage of the trace and the storage of the corresponding metric. The following table describes the unit price of each billable item.

Managed Service for OpenTelemetry provides daily free quotas. You are not charged for resource usage within the free quotas. However, if your daily resource usage equals or exceeds the free quotas, you are charged based on all traces and metrics.

Billable item

Free quota

Unit price in the Chinese mainland

Unit price in China (Hong Kong)

Unit price in regions outside China

Reporting of traces

100,000 traces per day

USD 0.13 per million traces

USD 0.182 per million traces

USD 0.182 per million traces

Storage of traces

100,000 traces per day

USD 0.03 per million traces × Number of days

USD 0.042 per million traces × Number of days

USD 0.042 per million traces × Number of days

Storage of metrics

One million metrics per day

USD 0.0015 per million metrics × Number of days

USD 0.0021 per million metrics × Number of days

USD 0.0021 per million metrics × Number of days

Note
  • The reporting fee of traces is calculated based on the number of spans in the reported traces. The reported traces are aggregated to generate the statistical metrics of applications, APIs, and databases. The statistical metrics include the elapsed time, queries per second (QPS), and number of exceptions.

    Example: A million traces are reported per day in a region in the Chinese mainland. The reporting fee of the traces per day is USD 0.13 (1 × USD 0.13).

  • The storage fee of traces is calculated based on the storage size used per day and the retention period of the traces. You can go to the Cluster Configurations tab of the Cluster Configurations page in the Managed Service for OpenTelemetry console and change the default retention period based on your business requirements.

    Example: A million traces are reported per day in a region in the Chinese mainland and stored for 15 days. In the 15 days, a total of 15 million traces are reported. The storage fee of the traces per day is USD 0.45 (15 × USD 0.03).

  • The storage fee of metrics is calculated based on the storage size used per day and the retention period of the metrics. To adjust the number of days for which the metrics are stored, you can go to the Cluster Configurations tab of the Cluster Configurations page and change the retention period based on your business requirements.

    Example: A million traces are reported per day in a region in the Chinese mainland and stored for 15 days. A million metrics are generated per day. In the 15 days, a total of 15 million metrics are generated. The storage fee of the metrics per day is USD 0.0225 (15 × USD 0.0015).

  • Billing rules:

    • Fees are calculated on a daily basis in Managed Service for OpenTelemetry. A bill for the previous day is generated at 00:00 every day.

    • The daily reporting fee of traces is calculated based on the number of the traces that are reported within a day.

    • The storage fee of traces or metrics is calculated based on the storage size used per day and the retention period.

Activate Managed Service for OpenTelemetry

To activate Managed Service for OpenTelemetry on a pay-as-you-go basis, go to the buy page.

Billing period

A bill is generated every day at 00:00 based on the amount of resources that you consumed on the previous day. Fees are deducted from the balance of your Alibaba Cloud account on a daily basis.

Billing examples

Example 1: 400 million traces are reported per day in a region in the Chinese mainland, and 400 million metrics are generated per day.

  • Solution 1: The traces and metrics are stored for 30 days.

    The reporting fee of the traces per day is USD 52 (400 × USD 0.13).

    The storage fee of the traces per day is USD 360 (400 × 30 × USD 0.03).

    The storage fee of the metrics per day is USD 18 (400 × 30 × USD 0.0015).

    The total fee is USD 430 per day.

  • Solution 2: The traces are stored for seven days, and the metrics are stored for 30 days.

    The reporting fee of the traces per day is USD 52 (400 × USD 0.13).

    The storage fee of the traces per day is USD 84 (400 × 7 × USD 0.03).

    The storage fee of the metrics per day is USD 18 (400 × 30 × USD 0.0015).

    The total fee is USD 154 per day.

Example 2: 10 million traces are reported per day in a region in the Chinese mainland, and 10 million metrics are generated per day.

The traces are stored for seven days, and the metrics are stored for 30 days.

The reporting fee of the traces per day is USD 1.3 (10 × 0.13).

The storage fee of the traces per day is USD 2.1 (10 × 7 × USD 0.03).

The storage fee of the metrics per day is USD 0.45 (10 × 30 × USD 0.0015).

The total fee is USD 3.85 per day.

Benefits

Compared with other self-managed open source services, Managed Service for OpenTelemetry is continuously optimized for higher cost-effectiveness. Most open source application performance management (APM) systems store data for only seven days. In contrast, Managed Service for OpenTelemetry stores data for 30 days by default.

To help you customize the retention period of data in a flexible manner, Managed Service for OpenTelemetry provides a new billing model that separately charges you the computing fee and storage fee. Managed Service for OpenTelemetry also allows you to change the default retention period of data based on your business requirements. This reduces costs.

Comparison on costs between self-managed open source services and Managed Service for OpenTelemetry

Customer type

Number of nodes for a customer

Number of requests per day

Server configurations

Cost of a self-managed open source service (USD per month)

Managed Service for OpenTelemetry (USD per month)

Small-sized customer

80

20 million requests. Request complexity: five spans per request on average.

  • Four Elasticsearch servers. Server specifications: 4 CPU cores, 16 GB of memory, and 1 TB SSD.

  • Four Collector servers. Server specifications: 4 CPU cores and 8 GB of memory.

864.52

113.29

Medium-sized customer

300

300 million requests. Request complexity: seven spans per request on average.

  • Eight Elasticsearch servers. Server specifications: 8 CPU cores, 16 GB of memory, and 6 TB SSD.

  • Eight Collector servers. Server specifications: 4 CPU cores and 8 GB of memory.

3,330.07

2,379.79

Large-sized customer

1,000

One billion requests. Request complexity: eight spans per request on average.

  • 12 Elasticsearch servers. Server specifications: 16 CPU cores, 64 GB of memory, and 21 TB SSD.

  • 16 Collector servers. Server specifications: 4 CPU cores and 8 GB of memory.

9,641.81

9,599.15

Note
  • The number of nodes for a customer is the number of Elastic Compute Service (ECS) instances or the number of Docker containers.

  • The number of requests per day is calculated based on Apache documentation. Each trace can report 10 KB of data.

  • The server configurations are determined based on assumptions that statistical data is stored for 15 days and full detail data is stored for seven days.

  • You are charged based on the total number of requests that are stored for your application. Formula: Total number of requests = Number of requests per day × Data retention period. Open source agents are used. Other components are maintained by Alibaba Cloud.