Sustained Use Discounts - GCP Cost Management

Sustained Use Discounts (SUDs) are a powerful tool in cloud computing cost management. It allows long-running virtual machines and resources to automatically enjoy cost savings, and is especially suitable for enterprises and individual users who want to realize maximum value in cloud environments. This article will provide an in-depth analysis of the working principle, restrictions and practical application scenarios of this feature to help you better understand and use this preferential policy.

If you want to know how to achieve the best results in GCP cost savings, you can refer to:How to maximize cloud benefits through GCP savings and discounts?

What are Sustained Use Discounts?

The renewal discounts (SUDs) provided by Compute Engine are applicable to resources that are used for more than 25% of the billing month. If no other discounts are applied, the system will automatically provide a discount for each additional hour of usage. The longer the usage, the higher the discount percentage, up to 30% discount on resource costs, especially for virtual machines (VMs) that run throughout the month.

For more technical details and rules about SUDs, please refer toGoogle official documents.

Restrictions

Renewal discounts apply under the following conditions:

1. Limited to self-serve or online Cloud Billing accounts.
2. Already usedCommitted Use Discounts (CUDs)The resources are not applicable to SUDs.
3. Applies only to VMs created by Compute Engine and Google Kubernetes Engine.
   • VMs created by App Engine and Dataflow are not eligible.
4. Discount applies to selected machine series only.(Please refer to the official resource list for details)

How it works and using discounts

Compute Engine automatically calculates and applies renewal discounts, so users do not need to manually enable them. Discounts are applied to your bill monthly and are used as credits to offset resource usage.

• The credit has no cash value and is limited to use during the current month.
• Credits earned each month can be viewed in the Cost Sheet report in the Google Cloud Console.

How renewal discounts are calculated

Compute Engine calculates the total monthly resource usage and provides credits to eligible resources based on the resource's maximum discount.

• There is no need to run the VM continuously for the whole month.Even if the VM is stopped midway, Compute Engine will still accumulate the usage time of each resource.
• Resource usage is summarized by machine family and region, to maximize discount benefits.

Discount ratio

As resource usage increases, the discount percentage increases. Discount levels are calculated based on usage time reaching thresholds of 25%, 50%, 75% and 100%.

The figure above shows an example of resource usage being discounted, for example:

• The maximum monthly discount for resources is 30%.
  • For months using 50%, the discount is 10%.
  • For months using 75%, the discount is 20%.
  • Use the entire month and get a 30% discount.
  • hint: To maximize the discount, it is recommended to create the VM at the beginning of the month and use it for the entire month.

Renewal discount calculation example

Renewal discount calculation example 1

Assume the following scenario:

• first half monthRunning an n1-standard-4 VM (4 vCPUs and 15 GB memory).
• Upgraded in the second half of the month,and run a larger n1-standard-16 VM (16 vCPUs and 60 GB memory).

Compute Engine breaks down and combines resources as follows:

• 4 vCPUs: Used throughout the month, (4 vCPUs * $0.031611 * 730 hours) * 0.7 = $64.612884
• 12 vCPUs: Half a month of use, (12 vCPUs * $0.031611 * 365 hours) * 0.9 = $124.610562
• 15 GB memory: Used throughout the month, (15 GB * $0.004237 * 730 hours) * 0.7 = $32.476605
• 45 GB memory: Half a month of use, (45 GB * $0.004237 * 365 hours) * 0.9 = $62.6334525
• lump sum:$284.3335035

Renewal discount calculation example 2

For GPU resources, the discount is calculated based on the quantity of the GPU model. Compute Engine aggregates GPU usage time of the same model across different VMs to provide maximum discounts.

For example:

• For the first half month, I used a VM with 1 GPU.
• Use another VM with 4 GPUs for the second half of the month.

The discount is calculated as follows:

1. 1 GPU(Whole month): Enjoy 30% off.
2. 3 GPUs(Half Month): Enjoy 10% discount.

in conclusion

Renewal discounts are an important feature of Compute Engine, helping users effectively reduce the cost of long-running resources. Properly planning resource usage time and making good use of this discount can significantly reduce cloud operating expenses.

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