Cloud computers can be purchased either on a monthly basis or on demand. With on-demand purchases, you are charged based on the pay-as-you-go billing method, allowing you to purchase and release cloud computers as needed. The pay-as-you-go billing method is ideal for short-term users, such as interns or training institutions. This topic describes the pay-as-you-go billing method, including the billing rules of resources and the impacts of overdue payments.
Billing formula
Billing cycles
The computing and storage resources of cloud computers have separate billing cycles.
Computing resources: Billing for computing resources applies only when a cloud computer is running. Billing for computing resources stops when the cloud computer is Stopped or Hibernated.
Storage resources: The billing cycle for storage resources starts when cloud computers are created and ends when the cloud computers are released. Billing continues without interruption throughout this cycle.
Settlement cycles
Bills for pay-as-you-go cloud computers are generated and settled hourly, on the hour (UTC+8).
For example, you purchased and started a cloud computer at 08:45:30 and released the cloud computer at 10:20:30. During this period, the cloud computer was not shut down. The cloud computer has the following settlement cycles:
The first settlement cycle starts at 08:00:00 (UTC+8) and ends at 09:00:00 (UTC+8). Fees are generated for a usage duration of 870 seconds from 08:45:30 (UTC+8) to 09:00:00 (UTC+8).
The second settlement cycle starts at 09:00:00 (UTC+8) and ends at 10:00:00 (UTC+8). Fees are generated for a usage duration of 3,600 seconds from 09:00:00 (UTC+8) to 10:00:00 (UTC+8).
The third settlement cycle starts at 10:00:00 (UTC+8) and ends at 11:00:00 (UTC+8). Fees are generated for a usage duration of 1,230 seconds from 10:00:00 (UTC+8) to 10:20:30 (UTC+8).
Settlement rules
The system generates a bill for each settlement cycle and deducts fees from your account based on your resource usage. Then, the system starts the next billing cycle.
If your account balance, including coupons, is insufficient to cover the fees, you will receive an email notification about the payment failure. To avoid disruptions from stopped or released cloud computers, we recommend that you complete your payment as soon as possible.
Billing examples
Billing formulas:
Computing resources (pay-as-you-go)
Fee = Hourly price × Number of hoursStorage resources (pay-as-you-go)
Fee = Hourly price per GiB × Capacity in GiB × Number of hours
Purchase details:
Computing specification: 4 vCPUs, 8 GiB memory
System disk: 80 GiB
Data disk: 100 GiB
Usage:
The cloud computer runs for 10 hours.
The cloud computer is retained for 12 hours (from the time when the cloud computer is created to the time when it is released).
Fee calculation:
Computing resource fee
= Hourly price × Number of hours
= 0.148 × 10
= USD 1.48
Storage resource fee
= Hourly price per GiB × Capacity in GiB × Number of hours
= 0.00007 × (80 + 100) × 12
= USD 0.1512
Total fees
= Computing resource fee + Storage resource fee
= USD 1.6312Impacts of overdue payments
If the total balance of your account, including coupons, is less than the amount due, the system will mark your account as having an overdue payment.
You can go to the User Center to view overdue payments.
If your account has an overdue payment, your cloud computer enters the Expired state. Your data is retained, but the cloud computer becomes unusable. You cannot start, stop, restart, or connect to the cloud computer. To resume using the service, you must top up your account within 30 days of expiration. Otherwise, starting from the 31st day, the system automatically releases the cloud computer's resources.
Once a cloud computer is released, its data and snapshots are deleted and cannot be recovered.
Switch from pay-as-you-go to monthly subscription
You can switch the billing method of a cloud computer from pay-as-you-go to monthly subscription without affecting its data or usage.
You cannot switch the billing method for a many-to-many share.
Prerequisites
The cloud computer is in the Running or Stopped state.
The cloud computer has no unpaid orders. If there are unpaid orders, you must complete the payment or cancel the orders before you can switch the billing method.
Procedure
Log on to the Elastic Desktop Service Enterprise console.
In the left-side navigation pane, choose .
In the top navigation bar, select a region.
On the Cloud Computers page, find the cloud computer for which you want to switch the billing method, click Actions in the More column, then select Switch Billing Method.
NoteYou can also select multiple cloud computers (up to 20 at a time), click More at the bottom of the page, and select Switch Billing Method to perform the switch in batches.
In the Switch Billing Method panel, under the New Billing Method section, select Monthly Subscription, select a computing plan, and then click Switch Billing Method.
NoteAll cloud computers support the unlimited computing plan. The limited computing plans are only available for cloud computers with 4 vCPU/8 GiB or 8 vCPU/16 GiB specifications.
For a cloud computer on a monthly subscription plan (limited hours), if the included monthly hours are used up, the cloud computer continues to run by default. To prevent this, select the When the monthly running hours of a cloud computer are exhausted, the system automatically stops or hibernates the cloud computer checkbox.
Complete the payment as prompted.