Billing
This topic describes the billing method and billable items for Gene Analysis Platform, and the costs associated with other Alibaba Cloud services.
Overview
Gene Analysis Platform is a fully managed, serverless gene computing service by Alibaba Cloud. You do not need to create or manage clusters. All resources are elastic and provisioned on demand. The platform supports any sample size, from a single sample to tens of millions. You pay only for the resources that you use. This provides flexibility, cost savings, and fine-grained management.
Billing method
A gene data analytics job usually consists of one or more steps. Alibaba Cloud Gene Analysis Platform uses Workflow Description Language (WDL), which is supported by the Global Alliance for Genomics and Health (GA4GH), to define bioinformatics analysis applications. WDL provides a standard, parameterized way to describe the compute resources, execution environment, and dependencies for each step.
When you submit a run using these applications, the workflow execution engine parses the run into multiple backend compute jobs. The platform then automatically and intelligently processes these jobs in parallel until the run is complete.
Gene Analysis Platform uses a pay-as-you-go billing method. You are charged for the platform resources that are consumed by the compute jobs within a run.
Billable items and pricing
You can specify the platform resources for a single compute job using the runtime properties of the corresponding step in the analysis application. The supported resource types, specifications, and their WDL definitions are described in the following table.
Resource type |
Description |
Specification |
WDL definition |
Notes |
Compute instance |
Execution environment for compute jobs, such as containers, x86, GPU, or FPGA. |
vCPU |
cpu:1 |
vCPU and memory are used together and must meet the Limits. |
Memory |
memory:"2G" |
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ECS instance |
instanceType:"ecs.c5.xlarge" |
Using an ECS instance overwrites the vCPU and memory settings. |
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Compute storage |
Localized storage for the input and output files of a compute job. |
NAS Capacity |
disks:"local-disk 20G nas_cap" |
Can be used as a data disk. For more information, see Set runtime properties. |
NAS Performance |
disks:"local-disk 100G nas_per" |
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enterprise SSD (ESSD) |
disks:"local-disk 100G cloud_essd" |
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Software and algorithms |
Software tools used by the compute job. |
Third-party software |
docker: "registry-vpc.cn-shenzhen.aliyuncs.com/easy-gene/genomes-in-the-cloud:1.0" |
Only Alibaba Cloud Container Registry is supported. For a list of third-party software built into the platform, see Third-party software. |
The billable items and prices for platform resources are as follows:
Billable item |
Description |
Price |
Discount during public preview* |
instance_type |
Compute instance type |
During the public preview, pulling and returning compute data and pulling images are free for a limited time. |
|
gpu_type |
GPU type |
gc4.medium: CNY 13/hour gc5.medium: CNY 15/hour gc7.small: CNY 14/hour |
|
cpu |
Number of cores |
CNY 0.17640/core/hour |
|
mem |
Memory |
CNY 0.02207/GiB/hour |
|
nas_cap |
NAS Capacity |
CNY 0.00049/GiB/hour |
|
nas_per |
NAS Performance |
CNY 0.0025694/GiB/hour |
|
cloud_essd |
ESSD PL0 |
CNY 0.001155/GiB/hour |
|
cloud_essd_pl1 |
ESSD PL1 |
CNY 0.00231/GiB/hour |
|
software |
Software and algorithms |
Third-party software pricing |
Compute resources are billed per minute, and usage for less than one minute is rounded up to one minute. During the public preview, storage resources are also billed per minute, and usage for less than one minute is rounded up to one minute.
Billing example
This section provides an example of analyzing a 30x whole-genome sequencing (WGS) sample using the damo/dna-variant-calling application on the Gene Analysis Platform.
The billing details are as follows:
30x WGS sample, ~90 GBase fastq file |
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Total cost for a 1.53-hour run using the damo/dna-variant-calling:v1.0.11 gene analysis application |
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Application step |
Number of parallel jobs |
Runtime |
Billable item |
Specification |
Unit price (CNY) |
Subtotal (CNY) |
Cost per step (compute job) |
Total cost per sample (run) |
FastqToVcf |
1 |
1.53h |
instance_type |
gc5.medium |
15.00 |
22.95 |
23.93 |
23.93 |
nas_per |
250 GB |
0.0025694 |
0.98 |
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software |
damo |
0.00 |
0.00 |
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The billing logic for a single compute job is as follows:
Fee = (Unit price of specification + Unit price of NAS Performance × NAS capacity + Unit price of software) × Runtime
The total fee for the run is the sum of the costs for all compute jobs that correspond to the steps in the analysis application.
Billing for other Alibaba Cloud services
When you run analysis jobs on the Gene Analysis Platform, you also use other Alibaba Cloud services. This usage may result in additional fees, as described in the following table.
Cloud product dependencies |
Purpose |
Fee type |
Billing description |
Notes |
OSS Standard |
Store gene data |
Storage fee |
Pay-as-you-go: CNY 0.12/GB/month. You can also purchase a resource plan. |
For more information, see the OSS product documentation. |
Download data files |
Traffic fee |
00:00–08:00 (off-peak): CNY 0.25/GB 08:00–24:00 (peak): CNY 0.50/GB |
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ACR Container Registry Personal Edition |
Personal tool images used in WDL. Not applicable if you do not use Docker. |
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The Personal Edition is free of charge. |
For more information, see the ACR product documentation. |