IWStack: Understanding the billing system

[Admin]

Hello !

I hope you enjoyed the beta tests and you wish to continue to use the (more) mature product, built with your help too (some credits have been already added to your account just in case).

Hourly billing is a lot more trickier than the one payment per month per VM as most of you are used to do, however it can save you a lot of money if done right and will help us use the resources more efficiently, therefore it is very important you understand how it works.

First of all, welcome to Prometeus Central Bank ! We will be issuing our own currency, called, for now, iwstack credits, in short, IC. All billing for IWStack resources will be done only in IC once a day, not in Euros, however, there is a loose approximation of 1 Eur per 1 IC at face value, as some promotions may be offered for serious customers which lower temporarily the IC value so you can buy the same number for the less Euros. Our currency has also 100 divisions, called cents.

Now, since you know what you will use to pay, here's a quick and dirty guide regarding what you are actually paying with the IC cents.

A resource can be of many types, for example Storage type resources, Traffic type resources, Address type resources, routing resources, RAM and CPU type resources. They are all billed hourly in a way or the other, so please look at the tables below for a breakdown of costs for one VM:
First, the main part, the CPU, the RAM, network and traffic. More packages will be made if there is a need, so far, these should cover most needs well:

Resource type	Resource name	Explanation *	Price per hour	Price per month
Computing instance	Basic 384	1 vCPU and 384 MB RAM	0.002	1.44
Computing instance	Basic 512	1 vCPU and 512 MB RAM	0.003	2.16
Computing instance	Basic 1 G	2 vCPU and 1024 MB RAM	0.006	4.32
Computing instance	Basic 2 G	4 vCPU and 2048 MB RAM	0.012	8.64
Computing instance	Basic 4 G	4 vCPU and 4096 MB RAM	0.024	17.28
Computing instance	Basic 8 G	8 vCPU and 8192 MB RAM	0.048	34.56

*) All computing instances include 1 IPv4, 1.5 GB outbound traffic per hour and FREE UNLIMITED inbound traffic. Each extra IPv4 costs 1 IC a month.

We now need some storage and this is of 2 types, main or live storage, SAN based, with Fiber-Channel links between the nodes and the Hitachi HUS 150 dedicated storage on one hand, and secondary storage, more like a back-up on a specialized NFS server (for now). The Live storage will hold the VM's file system (root and data virtual drives) while the secondary storage will hold the templates, ISOs and snapshots.

Storage Type	Cost per GB per Hour	Cost per GB per Month
Live (Main)	0.00015	0.110
Back-up (Secondary)	0.00005	0.036

We have now the CPU, the RAM, the traffic, the IPs, the storage, everything needed to run a basic VM, but the cloud can offer much more, Private network, IPsec VPN, External firewall with GUI, load balancing, etc. You can do without, of course, if you only need a sturdy redundant VM placed directly on the internet, but if you wish to have internal IPs on your own internal isolated LAN and save on IPv4, and all the other advanced features, you will need an advanced router which is a highly configurable VM controlled fully via the API or UI. This costs 0.006 IC per hour (4.32 per month) and you only need one for each isolated LAN you are creating.

So, lets suppose we have a high traffic web site which needs 2 webservers to do load balancing, one Database server to connect to and a workstation inside the VLAN for easier control. Each Web server will use the 1 G instance with 10 GB live storage and 1 automated snapshot, the database server will use a 2 G instance, 10 GB root disk, 2x 20 GB disks in raid 1 for data with one snapshot for the 10 GB disk and one for one of the 20 GB data ones and the workstation will use 1 G instance, 10 GB root disk and no back-ups.
So, we have so far:
3x1 G instances, 1x2 G, cost per hour, 1.8 IC cents
4x10 GB root disks, 2x20 GB data disks main/live storage, 80 GB at a total cost of 1.2 IC cents per hour
3x10 GB and 1x20 GB secondary storage (snapshots) for a total cost of 50x 0.005=0.25 IC cents per hour, and, of course, the factotum router VM for 0.6 cents an hour, grandtotal:
1.8+1.2+0.25+0.6=3.85 IC cents an hour, 0.92 IC a day, 27.72 IC a month.
So, 5 GB ram, 10 cores, 80+50 GB storage, 4.3 TB outgoing traffic and free unlimited incoming, with full HA, full fail-over, redundant network and storage links, KVM virtualization, full scalability, own ISO and uploadable/downloadable templates/snapshots/disk images, own isolated network with full control over the network access, with a cool panel and full API control for seamless scripting and integration with your other infrastructure for 27.72 IC, often less than that, per month !

You can buy right now ICs in batches of 10, 30, 60 or 100. For new accounts (those that do not have an account with Prometeus/Iperweb in good standing for a couple of months at least), the minimum initial purchase is 30 IC in an effort to keep abusers away.
We will make soon a change in our ToS/AUP, instead of a no refund policy, we will be offering pro-rated refunds to customers in good standing (no abuse, etc) minus a 1 Eur/GBP processing fee to cover the paypal and management costs. As before, for our fault (no resources left, no provisioning in time, bugged VM, etc) a full refund will be issued.