VPC access connectors can turn killed instances to zombies (you'll have to keep paying for)

[Haavard Nord]

I've had this email exchange with GCP billing support for almost two months now and getting nowhere.

My two projects are built on app engine standard, using VPC access connector to connect our services

to a compute engine instance running Redis.  This works well.

When experimenting with CE instances in December, I created and killed some instances in both

projects. I noticed later on the billing statement that I kept accruing costs for these killed instances that

were now gone and out of reach.

After lots of emailing back and forth with billing support, I finally get this answer:

I have a feedback from the specialized team and they advised that using of "VPC access connectors" in managed
instance group which makes some of the instances not visible to your end which is the reason why you are unable
to see the instance that is accruing charge to your account. 
This is also related to the mechanism of hiding resources that are managed by some Google system. 
I hope this information helps. Should you have additional questions on this matter, feel free to reply, and I'll be more
than happy to address your concerns at that time.

The implication of this is that using the officially supported VPC access connectors can turn killed instances to zombies

that are out of your reach since you already killed them, but they linger deep down in GCP and will show up on your

billing statement every month.

Doesn't sound right, and doesn't sound like Google.

Anyone else experienced this?

Haavard

[noverlyjoseph]

The Instance that you see you’re getting billed to but don’t have access to when you run

`gcloud compute instances list` for example, could be and probably is the VPC Serverless Instance. Serverless VPC Access connectors are charged as f1-micro Instances[1], which is what you probably see on your bill.

[1] https://cloud.google.com/vpc/docs/configure-serverless-vpc-access#pricing 

[Haavard Nord]

Yes, I first thought so, but the monthly bill for the instance is about $40 for a test environment with zero traffic (just 1 api request every 6 minutes).

The VPC is used for connecting the GAE standard service to a redis instance.  Every hour there are about 10-15 internal requests over the VPC

with max 2-3k total.

[Katayoon (Cloud Platform Support)]

Hi Haavard,

you may use the Price Calculator to get an estimate fee for the resources you are using and compare it with your invoice. If you believe you are overcharged, I recommend to report the issue to the Billing support team and if you think it is a technical issue, you may raise a report in the GCP Issue Tracker so that we will dig into the issue and proceed for the billing part after. 

[Haavard Nord]

Hi Katayoon,

Thanks. I got help from Grace @ 2nd line billing support and the issues are resolved.  Charges for serverless VPC access can be quite opaque, but after removing all services/resources and recreating the basic services I need it now looks the charges are what I expect them to be.

Best,

Haavard

On Feb 28, 2020, at 14:01, 'Katayoon (Cloud Platform Support)' via Google App Engine <google-a...@googlegroups.com> wrote:

Hi Haavard,

you may use the Price Calculator to get an estimate fee for the resources you are using and compare it with your invoice. If you believe you are overcharged, I recommend to report the issue to the Billing support team and if you think it is a technical issue, you may raise a report in the GCP Issue Tracker so that we will dig into the issue and proceed for the billing part after. 

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