A comparison of your current bill against the new pricing model is now available in the Billing History page.

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pdknsk

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Aug 31, 2011, 4:26:25 PM8/31/11
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It's an about 50% increase for me, because of datastore writes.

Waleed Abdulla

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Aug 31, 2011, 4:28:44 PM8/31/11
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It's 300% for me (3x what I pay now). Most of the cost is datastore writes and reads, followed by instance hours. 



On Wed, Aug 31, 2011 at 1:26 PM, pdknsk <pdk...@googlemail.com> wrote:
It's an about 50% increase for me, because of datastore writes.

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Robert Kluin

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Aug 31, 2011, 4:33:38 PM8/31/11
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Instance hours are the killer here too, seeing between 2x and 4x
depending on the app (with 50% discount).

Alon (Google)

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Aug 31, 2011, 4:36:34 PM8/31/11
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Please make sure to look at the strategies outlined in our new article
to try to optimize your app's resource usage:
http://code.google.com/appengine/articles/managing-resources.html

Felippe Bueno

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Aug 31, 2011, 4:36:42 PM8/31/11
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appid1 ~50%
appid2 ~340%
appid3 ~3200%

I just limited my idle instances (to 3). It seems that are some thing wrong


Instances help
QPS* Latency* Requests Errors Age Memory Availability
0.000 0.0 ms 104 0 18:39:24 14.9 MBytes Resident IconResident
0.000 0.0 ms 82 0 18:44:27 12.2 MBytes Resident IconResident
0.017 78.0 ms 297 0 18:38:45 15.4 MBytes Resident IconResident
0.317 24.5 ms 1468 0 0:44:29 15.9 MBytes Dynamic IconDynamic
0.617 14.7 ms 9641 0 3:51:11 24.4 MBytes Dynamic IconDynamic
0.700 15.5 ms 2742 0 0:55:25 16.1 MBytes Dynamic IconDynamic

It seems that 3 instances would be enough to serve my app, but appengine starts extra instances, and don't send requests to my resident instances.

pdknsk

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Aug 31, 2011, 4:46:18 PM8/31/11
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This app is still relatively low traffic, so instance hours aren't
billed here yet. However, I can already tell it will drive cost
significantly once traffic increases.

Gregory D'alesandre

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Aug 31, 2011, 4:49:27 PM8/31/11
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Hi Felippe, Always-On is still active which is why you have 3 resident instances, once the new model goes live you will be able to set the Minimum number of Idle instances which will essentially replace always-on.  So, you won't be billed for those under the new model.  More information can be found here: http://code.google.com/appengine/kb/postpreviewpricing.html#always_on_work_model

Hope that helps!

Greg D'Alesandre
Senior Product Manager, Google App Engine

thstart

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Aug 31, 2011, 4:50:27 PM8/31/11
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I have billing on set up with one credit card.

Now I want to change the credit card and leaving 
same billing - how top do that? 

thstart

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Aug 31, 2011, 4:51:56 PM8/31/11
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how top do that = how to do that
sorry, I was quick in submitting

Robert Kluin

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Aug 31, 2011, 4:51:54 PM8/31/11
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My apps *are* quite optimized. They are extremely fast, consume,
minimal RAM and very little CPU -- but there isn't much I can do about
the number of instances used. I consistently see well under 2 QPS /
instance -- for requests that always return in under 200ms. Seems
like the scheduler is performing quite poorly.

Gregory D'alesandre

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Aug 31, 2011, 4:56:49 PM8/31/11
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Hey Robert, the simplest thing that will reduce your bill will be to use reserved instance hours.  The bill estimates are for full priced instance-hours.  Are most of the apps java or python?  If java, are you using concurrent requests?  If python, do you want to participate in the python2.7 trusted tester to try out concurrent requests and give us feedback?  https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/viewform?formkey=dDVaelk0NkhHMVA2NU5kS1hfajNfM0E6MQ

Thanks!

Greg

Pratham Kumar

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Aug 31, 2011, 4:57:17 PM8/31/11
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For my (5-6) apps, I will go from 0-10c per day to around 10 USD/day.
Instance hours are the universal culprit.

Robert Kluin

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Aug 31, 2011, 5:03:33 PM8/31/11
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Hey Greg,
I'm in the 2.7 TT group, I've just got to get the time to test with
it a bit (it is a very busy time for me now). All my apps are Python.
I'm also working on consolidating and migrating some apps to HR with
a more space efficient datamodel.

Thanks for the response.


Robert

Felippe Bueno

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Aug 31, 2011, 5:08:24 PM8/31/11
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Greg,

How could us start using it (reserved instance) before new pricing ?

I'm asking because I think that what increases the "instance hours" is the 15-min startup penalization, am I wrong ?

Daniel Upton

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Aug 31, 2011, 5:23:29 PM8/31/11
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It's about 300% increase for me as well. May app is huge and this
would end up putting us out of business. We need some other options or
else you will lose a customer paying thousands per month.

Vivek Puri

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Aug 31, 2011, 5:26:14 PM8/31/11
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My bill is up by almost 3 times. I dont think i have the money to pay
for that. And the mid-september date is too near to be able to do
anything about it.

While Greg's reserved instance idea is great, but i dont think it can
push down the bill as much for a app owner since you might be either
under utilizing or over buying, either way loosing money.

Besides that, in the past 2 weeks i have seen random upward and
downward trends in instance count for my app, which make no sense to
me at all. I have observed my app using 100 instances and then
climbing to 200+ and then coming back to 130-140 range for pretty much
similar number of requests/sec. I dont think the scheduler is ready
for prime time pricing change.

Felippe Bueno

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Aug 31, 2011, 5:28:29 PM8/31/11
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+1


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Adam Sah

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Aug 31, 2011, 5:30:02 PM8/31/11
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bug: the console is not accepting my changes to the Max Instances...
   this is important to understanding our true costs under the new scheme.

thanks,
adam

Gregory D'alesandre

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Aug 31, 2011, 5:30:04 PM8/31/11
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Good question!  If you go to the "Billing Settings" part of your Admin Console you'll see that there is a place where you can choose the number of reserved instance hours to use per week.  If you set that up now, it will go into effect as soon as we go out of preview and the new billing is in place.  The 15-min calculation is taken into account on the bills but depending on what you are doing it shouldn't impact you dramatically.

Greg

Gregory D'alesandre

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Aug 31, 2011, 5:33:54 PM8/31/11
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Hi Adam, when you say it isn't accepting changes to Max Instances, what happens?  Could you file a bug in the issue tracker and we can take a look?

Thanks!

Greg

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Arnaldo M Pereira

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Aug 31, 2011, 5:38:06 PM8/31/11
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160% increase in one app for me, 65% in another.

In my case, I don't think it'll be enough to have a comparison table and an optimization doc. I'll make an effort to optimize more my app, but I have the feeling that this has became too expensive for most of my needs now.

Alon (Google)

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Aug 31, 2011, 5:47:45 PM8/31/11
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Hi All,

If your large bill increase is attributable primarily to Frontend
Instance Hours, one of your best bets is to go to your 'Application
Settings' page and reduce the value for Max Idle Instances (don't
forget to click 'Save Settings'). You can use the 'Instances' graph on
your dashboard to help you to choose a good value -- and you should
also be able watch the effect on that same graph.

-Alon

On Aug 31, 2:38 pm, Arnaldo M Pereira <arna...@getwi.com> wrote:
> 160% increase in one app for me, 65% in another.
>
> In my case, I don't think it'll be enough to have a comparison table and an
> optimization doc. I'll make an effort to optimize more my app, but I have
> the feeling that this has became too expensive for most of my needs now.
>
> On Wed, Aug 31, 2011 at 6:08 PM, Felippe Bueno <felippe.bu...@gmail.com>wrote:
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> > Greg,
>
> > How could us start using it (reserved instance) before new pricing ?
>
> > I'm asking because I think that what increases the "instance hours" is the
> > 15-min startup penalization, am I wrong ?
>
> > On Wed, Aug 31, 2011 at 5:56 PM, Gregory D'alesandre <gr...@google.com>wrote:
>
> >> Hey Robert, the simplest thing that will reduce your bill will be to use
> >> reserved instance hours.  The bill estimates are for full priced
> >> instance-hours.  Are most of the apps java or python?  If java, are you
> >> using concurrent requests?  If python, do you want to participate in the
> >> python2.7 trusted tester to try out concurrent requests and give us
> >> feedback?
> >>https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/viewform?formkey=dDVaelk0NkhHMVA2...
>
> >> Thanks!
>
> >> Greg

Francois Masurel

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Aug 31, 2011, 5:49:54 PM8/31/11
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+1 too.

You might want to star these issues :

http://code.google.com/p/googleappengine/issues/detail?id=5214 > Threadsafe + wild loading request time variation + concurrent requests = Killed-off instances
http://code.google.com/p/googleappengine/issues/detail?id=5066 > Avoid instance restarts on DeadlineExceedeException
http://code.google.com/p/googleappengine/issues/detail?id=5458 > More instance statistics required under the new scheduling and charge regime

François

pdknsk

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Aug 31, 2011, 5:58:37 PM8/31/11
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When are instances supposed to shut down after being idle? I've got
two idle instance (on a separate version) which didn't get a request
for almost two hours (1:47:09 ago).

Instances
QPS* Latency* Requests Errors Age Memory Availability
0.000 0.0 ms 14 0 1:53:29 9.0 MBytes Dynamic
0.000 0.0 ms 9 0 1:53:29 9.0 MBytes Dynamic

Adam Sah

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Aug 31, 2011, 5:59:39 PM8/31/11
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this problem has gone away-- sorry for the wasted post!

Jason Collins

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Aug 31, 2011, 6:39:28 PM8/31/11
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Alon,

Today, if I look at the Instances graph, the number of Total Instances
is much higher than the Active Instances (and always has been) - in
our case at the moment: 600 Total to about 150 Active.

Question: is the sample billing based on the Total Instances? I.e., is
tuning down the Max Idle Instances a really easy cost savings?

P.S., here are the shocking numbers we're facing:

app1: 3.8x increase (5.3x increase when Python instances go up in
price, unless we can get to 2.7 and thread-safety in time)
app2: 17.8x increase (34x increase when Python instances go up in
price, unless we can get to 2.7 and thread-safety in time)

In terms of real $$, for app1, we are looking at going from around
$60,000 / year to around $318,000 / year - that is a LOT of moola for
an application. If we cannot optimize down, it will be a prohibitive
amount of moola.

j

Raymond C.

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Aug 31, 2011, 8:45:43 PM8/31/11
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Just Datastore Writes alone is costing me more than before.

Alon (Google)

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Sep 1, 2011, 12:43:04 PM9/1/11
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Hi Jason,

Yes, Instance Hour billing is based on Total Instances -- turning down
'Max Idle Instances' should be an easy way to reduce your bill.
Also, be aware that the way we do real-time monitoring isn't perfect,
so the Instances graph or Instances page may show more than the
specified number of Idle Instances. However, you will never be charged
for more than the number of Max Idle Instances you specify.
Give that slider a shot. It will take a few days for the usage report
to appear, but if that doesn't have the desired effect on your moola,
please contact us at appengine_up...@google.com and someone
will try to help you out personally.

-Alon

Jason Collins

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Sep 1, 2011, 1:04:50 PM9/1/11
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"Just Datastore Writes alone is costing me more than before."

We are seeing a massive, almost unexplainable, datastore write
operations number.

Index writes count as a datastore write operation. I've recently
discovered (thanks Robert Kluin) that it's not just the indexes
mentioned in your index.yaml, but also the "per-attribute" indexes (2/
attribute: asc, desc).

Currently wading through many, many models to set indexed=False....

j

Daniel Florey

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Sep 1, 2011, 1:11:40 PM9/1/11
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I've also no clue how to track down and fix the datastore costs:


ResourceUsedFreeBillableCharge
CPU Time: 
$0.10/CPU hour
52.266.5045.76$4.58
Bandwidth Out: 
$0.12/GByte
0.171.000.00$0.00
Bandwidth In: 
$0.10/GByte
0.171.000.00$0.00
Stored Data: 
$0.005/GByte-day
2.071.001.07$0.01
Recipients Emailed: 
$0.10/1000 Emails
0.082.000.00$0.00
Backend Usage: 
Prices
$0.00$0.72$0.00$0.00
Always On: 
$0.30/Day
No--$0.00
Total:$4.59

Estimated Charges Under New Pricing

The charges below are estimates of what you would be paying once App Engine's new pricing model goes live. The amounts shown below are for your information only, they are not being charged and therefore do not affect your balance.

If you would like to optmize your application to reduce your costs in the future, make sure to read our Optimization Article. If you have any additional questions or concerns, please contact us at: appengine_up...@google.com.

Frontend Instance Hour costs reflect a 50% price reduction active until November 20th, 2011.
ResourceUsedFreeBillableCharge
Frontend Instance Hours:
$0.04/Hour
87.8324.0063.83$2.56
Backend Instance Hours:
$0.08/Hour
0.009.000.00$0.00
Datastore Storage: 
$0.008/GByte-day
2.071.001.07$0.01
Blobstore Storage: 
$0.0057/GByte-day
0.005.000.00$0.00
Datastore Writes: 
$1.00/Million Ops
0.840.050.79$0.79
Datastore Reads: 
$0.70/Million Ops
18.660.0518.61$13.03
Small Datastore Operations: 
$0.10/Million Ops
497.750.05497.70$49.77
Bandwidth In: 
$0.10/GByte
0.171.000.00$0.00
Bandwidth Out: 
$0.15/GByte
0.171.000.00$0.00
Emails: 
$0.01/100 Messages
0.721.000.00$0.00
XMPP Stanzas: 
$0.01/1000 Stanzas
0.001.000.00$0.00
Opened Channels: 
$0.01/100 Opens
0.001.000.00$0.00
Total*: (before clipping to daily budget)$66.16

* Note this total does not take into account the minimum per-application charge in the new pricing model.

Vivek Puri

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Sep 1, 2011, 1:18:31 PM9/1/11
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Alon

Please explain as to what would be a good number to tune down to when
active instances is 150 and total is 600. Are Max idle instances in
addition to the active instances, eg 150 active and 100 idle = 250
total instances? Also, are you charged for 250 now, or for 150, which
is really the active number of instances.

Besides this, what is the go-live date for this change. All the email
mentions is sometime in September, which IMHO, is far-far too vague
for such a critical change.

And please, answer the questions here or on your email. It should not
really take 12-18 hours for Google team to respond to such a critical
issue.



On Sep 1, 12:43 pm, "Alon (Google)" <al...@google.com> wrote:
> Hi Jason,
>
> Yes, Instance Hour billing is based on Total Instances -- turning down
> 'Max Idle Instances' should be an easy way to reduce your bill.
> Also, be aware that the way we do real-time monitoring isn't perfect,
> so the Instances graph or Instances page may show more than the
> specified number of Idle Instances. However, you will never be charged
> for more than the number of Max Idle Instances you specify.
> Give that slider a shot. It will take a few days for the usage report
> to appear, but if that doesn't have the desired effect on your moola,
> please contact us at appengine_updated_pric...@google.com and someone

Vivek Puri

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Sep 1, 2011, 1:59:46 PM9/1/11
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@Jason, you have to very careful about this change. Couple of years
back, i had made similar change without doing complete homework as to
where the columns are being used and ended up breaking the code in
number of places. Since single column queries are only inside your
code and if code base is large, there is potentially no way you can be
sure about where all a particular column is being used. So, make is
perfectly sure that you dont need the index before removing it.

Also, once the index is set to false, it is not clear, if you decided
you need the index back, what is going to happen in that case. Will
GAE rebuild the index? If yes, i dont think it shows up on the indexes
page if it is being rebuilt. So you can be pretty much in the dark as
to what is going on.

Robert Kluin

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Sep 2, 2011, 2:28:50 AM9/2/11
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If your remove and re-add a single property index, you'll have to iterate over all your entities reputting them. Single property indexes won't be auto-rebuilt based on your model defs.

Robert


Raymond C.

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Sep 2, 2011, 4:13:50 AM9/2/11
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Yes thats a really strong point that you SHOULD NOT over-doing "indexed=False".  You will regret one day you found that you dont even have a way to query sth extremely simple, like for debugging.

Alex Popescu

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Sep 5, 2011, 10:00:26 AM9/5/11
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I've posted this also on the "Keep it short: Who is forced to leave GAE?", but here's the gist of it: 7 single-user (now) apps 
from which only 4th in active use: going from almost $0/month to $645/month. 

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