Billed instance hours 3x dashboard instance hours

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c h

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Oct 4, 2012, 7:34:29 PM10/4/12
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Hello,

for the last few days i've been tracking instance hours on my app.  when i look at the instance hours in the dashboard they are much smaller than the billed amount.  yesterday at about 11:55pm (just before the reset) the dashboard showed me about 400 frontend instance hours used.  My bill for yesterday shows over 1,000 Frontend Instance hours used.

Further when i look at the "Instances" chart i see that i was never over 30 billed instances....so if we say 30 instances X 24 hours (all F1) that would be 720 Frontend Instance hours.

I'm confused as to why the numbers are not lining up?

Am i reading something incorrectly?

thanks,

christian
instancechart.jpeg
billed.jpeg

Takashi Matsuo

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Oct 5, 2012, 1:26:57 AM10/5/12
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Hi christian,

Is the instance chart only for one version?
Do you have any other version which runs some instances?
Did you run any backup/copy/delete task with Datastore Admin?

If the answers are no to all of above, please tell me your app-id.

-- Takashi


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c h

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Oct 5, 2012, 3:43:09 PM10/5/12
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Takashi,

Thanks for the reply!  I have some backends, but those are accounted under backend instance hours.  nothing else hitting frontends.  i just double checked the chart for all versions and it is what i sent.

i did not do any backup/copy/delete tasks with Datastore Admin for several days now.  nothing is hung there that i can see.

i'd prefer to to send appid off the group...will do so in a moment.

thanks!

christian

c h

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Oct 8, 2012, 4:37:49 PM10/8/12
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i sent my appid in on friday.  it looks like over the weekend we are continuing to have this mis-match between hours in the console and hours then billed.  am i reading something wrong?

thanks,

christian

Takashi Matsuo

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Oct 8, 2012, 9:09:44 PM10/8/12
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Hi Christian,

Thanks for the info. We're aware of this issue in the graph, working on the fix.


-- Takashi


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c h

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Oct 8, 2012, 9:16:17 PM10/8/12
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Takashi,

So that means the what you show throughout the day for Frontend instance hours, and the graph of the number of instances currently is inaccurate?  We are concerned because we made a change (disabled appstats) which seemed to decrease the number of hours we were using significantly, but the cost did not go down.

When will the fix for the dashboard go into place?  Our bill has nearly doubled since switching to python2.7 and we need to be able to optimize our application, but if we don't know what resources it is actually using we won't be able to find the right things to target.

thanks,

christian

Takashi Matsuo

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Oct 8, 2012, 9:24:47 PM10/8/12
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On Tue, Oct 9, 2012 at 10:16 AM, c h <how...@umich.edu> wrote:
Takashi,

So that means the what you show throughout the day for Frontend instance hours, and the graph of the number of instances currently is inaccurate?  We are concerned because we made a change (disabled appstats) which seemed to decrease the number of hours we were using significantly, but the cost did not go down.

When will the fix for the dashboard go into place?  Our bill has nearly doubled since switching to python2.7 and we need to be able to optimize our application, but if we don't know what resources it is actually using we won't be able to find the right things to target.

Sorry for the inconvenience. Can you file a bug on our issue tracker for tracking purpose?

-- Takashi

 
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c h

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Oct 8, 2012, 9:30:22 PM10/8/12
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What should i file as the bug?  As far as i can tell google is overcharging us by 2x.  This needs to be resolved immediately and retroactively.  I'll have our company finance officers get in touch with google billing to get this settled, and i'll file the bug.

thank you,

christian

Takashi Matsuo

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Oct 8, 2012, 9:35:46 PM10/8/12
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Sorry I should have been more clear. I think this issue is affecting only the graph. The billing amount should be still correct.

If you feel differently, please consult our billing support team at:

Thanks,


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c h

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Oct 8, 2012, 9:45:17 PM10/8/12
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can you at least provide for me information about how the graph is wrong, how much it is wrong, and how to calculate what my expected charges should be until the issue is resolved?  otherwise i expect to be billed at the lower rate that your charts and graphs show me.

Takashi Matsuo

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Oct 8, 2012, 10:50:12 PM10/8/12
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Hi Christian,

First of all, I need to apologize that your issue if different from the one I mentioned.
I'm escalating this to the engineering team.

-- Takashi


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c h

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Oct 8, 2012, 11:33:27 PM10/8/12
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Takashi,

thanks!  sorry if i was unclear before...there are indeed lots of moving parts to keep track of!

let me know if the engineering team has anything to help me out.

christian

c h

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Oct 14, 2012, 11:47:00 AM10/14/12
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Are there any updates from the engineering team?  It's been another week of overbilling.....

thanks,

christian

Takashi Matsuo

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Oct 15, 2012, 11:20:18 AM10/15/12
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Hi Christian,

Sorry we're still investigating. However, I'm fairly certain that this is a display bug of billing instance graph rather than overcharging, because the max idle instance settings is set to automatic for this app, which means the number of total instances should be the same as the number of billed instances.

Of course, this display bug still sucks, but at least we don't think it's overcharging issue. 

Also, if you still see higher bills than before, I think it's worth investigating why, but this is another issue in my perspective. Do you still see any unreasonable higher bills?

-- Takashi


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c h

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Oct 15, 2012, 1:46:32 PM10/15/12
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Thanks for the update.

Yes, i do see unreasonably high bills.  starting on the day that i first contacted google we changed our app to stop using appstats, and saw a significant decrease in the number of instance hours used both in the graph and in the daily totals from the dashboard.  we were shocked to find that when we were billed we were still being billed almost exactly the same number of instance hours as before.

We are still seeing a 50-70% increase from the number of frontend instance hours reported on our dashboard as we approach midnight PDT to what shows in the daily bill.

The other difficulty stems from the simple fact that Google is not charging me based on the services i actually use.  All data that i have access to says I'm using instance hours at one rate, and I'm being charged for some phantom hours.  Not only is this bad customer service, but in most places it is against the law.  If there is indeed a bug in the system (and bugs do happen), we need either full disclosure of the bug so that we can budget our costs appropriately, or we need to be charged at a rate that matches the usage that is being reported to us.

thanks,

christian

c h

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Oct 15, 2012, 11:20:08 PM10/15/12
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looking again at my instances graph, over the weekend i would have had to have 37-40 instances on all day to run up the number of instance hours i was billed for, but even unbilled instances in the graph is not that high (it peaks there, but it is not sustained that high).  we need to have this fixed ASAP so that we can predict our costs and understand how app changes change our cost.

thanks,

christian
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