Thread by @iRomin

A long thread on understanding Google Cloud Platform Compute Engine pricing and how to utilize the various pricing levers at your disposal via the Google Cloud Cost Calculator. Let’s go. (contd)

#GoogleCloudPlatform #ComputeEngine #Pricing #GCPCostCalculator

Google Compute Engine provides a core infrastructure component : Virtual Machines (VM) that are classified into diff families (general, memory optimized, compute optimized) & each family has various machine types. See this guide on how to choose :cloud.google.com/compute/docs/m… (contd)

Each of the machine types (e.g. N1 general purpose) will have several *fixed* or *pre-defined* configurations (instance types) of VPU and RAM. You can choose the appropriate instance types. A set of instance types for N1 is shown below: (contd)

An important thing to consider when you choose a machine type is whether it is available in the GCP Region (actually zone) since VMs are zonal resources. Check out the list of GCP regions and availability of machine types. cloud.google.com/compute/docs/r… (contd)

VM is a rented resource and hence you are charged for the time that you use the Virtual VM. Let’s qualify that. You are charged for the amount of time that you keep a VM in running state. If a VM is stopped, you are not charged for it. cloud.google.com/compute/vm-ins… (contd)

Is there any minimum charge? Is it charged by second/minute/hour? Here you go:
- All vCPUs, GPUs, and GB of memory are charged a minimum of 1 minute.
- After 1 minute, instances are charged in 1 second increments. (contd)

Each VM instance type has a pricing associated with it i.e. per hour pricing. Higher the vCPU/RAM, the pricing inches upwards. Example: pricing for N1 instance types (cloud.google.com/compute/vm-ins…). *Remember* the prices are not the same in each region. (contd)

The pricing is classified into On-demand price, Preemptible price, 1 year commitment price and 3-year commitment price. This can be confusing but let’s understand it with an example that we shall work through with the help of the GCP Cost Calculator. (contd)

First up, we will finalize that we are interested in provisioning a Compute Engine VM instance type (n1-standard-1), which has the following configuration:
- vCPU : 1
- RAM (GB) : 3.75 GB
- Region : Mumbai
- OS : Free (Linux)
(contd)

Remember, I mentioned that GCP charges you for duration that you keep the VM running. So you run it 24 x 7 i.e. 7 days a week and for 24 hours a day i.e. you keep the VM running. GCP charges you by the rate for that instance type. But not everything needs to run 24 x 7.
(contd)

I could have development , test and production environments. The production environments run 24 x 7 but my dev/test environment might only run for 5 days a week (Mon-Fri) and 8 hours a day (9:00AM - 5:00 PM). So I should be charged less right ? Correct. (contd)

First up, we will use the GCP Cost Calculator available at (cloud.google.com/products/calcu…) and see what it costs to run this VM. Visit the URL and enter the values as:
- # instances : 1
- OS : Free
- Series : N1
- Machine Type : n1-standard-1
- Region : Mumbai
(contd)

Ensure that you select 24 hours per day and 7 days per week as shown below. Click on “Add to Estimate”. This will show the pricing to you on the right side:
(contd)

Note:
- The pricing is for the full month : 730 hours per month i.e. your VM is in running state throughout the month
- You can change the currency
- You can email this estimate or even click on Save Estimate to get a URL to share and keep collaborating on the pricing.
(contd)

Notice one of the entries in the billing details “Sustained Use Discount : 30%” . What is going on here? Google Cloud provides an automatic discount (upto a certain %) off the list price, when you use the VM for more time , in our case the entire amount.
(contd)

The more you use, the more discount you get. Check this graph out. If you use it for just 15 days a month, we still give you a % discount. This is Sustained Use Discount (SUD) and it is covered here: cloud.google.com/compute/docs/s…
(contd)

That’s great , isn’t it ? No need to do complex calculations -- we pass on the discount as per your usage. Next up, remember the dev and test environments? What if you wanted to run this for the following:
5 days a week
8 hours a day
(contd)

Let’s click on the Edit button for the pricing as shown below. This will populate the entries in the form of the GCP Calculator, where you can then tweak any settings.
(contd)

Now go ahead and change the values as shown below:
8 hours per day
5 days per week

And click on “Add to Estimate” again.
(contd)

This will bring up the revised pricing as shown below:
(contd)

Good discount , isnt it ? So always plan out your different environments (Production, Development , Testing) and how long the VMs need to be running. Don’t pay for resources that are idle and you are not using. Best Practice : cloud.google.com/compute/docs/i… (contd)

Now, what let’s come to Committed Use Discounts (CUD). If you are willing to commit to running these instances all the time for a period of 1 yr or 3 yr, Google Cloud can give additional discounts. Read about CUD here (cloud.google.com/compute/docs/i… ) (contd)

Let’s see how to do that in the calculator. Let’s edit the previous entry back to running it 24x7 , so that the total is shown as below. This time, we will also label this line item as : SUD Server. (contd)

Next up, make 2 VM entries, one with :
- # instances : 1
- What for : CUD-1yr
- OS : Free
- Series : N1
- Machine Type : n1-standard-1
- Region : Mumbai
- Committed Use Discount : 1 yr

and another similar one but :
- What for : CUD-1yr
- Committed Use Discount : 1 yr.
(contd)

You can see how it is beneficial to go for CUD pricing, if you plan to commit to GCP.
Hope this was useful. I plan to cover more some nuances next on Compute Engine pricing vis-a-vis Custom Machine Types and Pre-emptible in another thread. Cheers. (end)