Elastic (Special Offer) Savings Plan

Introduction to the Elastic (Special Offer) Savings Plan

The Elastic (Special Offer) Savings Plan is a discount plan that applies to the RCU and storage space billing items for RDS Serverless products.

You prepay a committed spending amount. The system then calculates a total deductible amount based on your commitment. This amount is used to offset your bills for Serverless instance RCUs and storage space for six months. If the total deductible amount is not fully used after six months, the remaining balance expires. If the amount is used up before the six-month period ends, subsequent bills for Serverless instance RCUs and storage space are charged to your account.

Purchase

Click here to purchase an Elastic (Special Offer) Savings Plan

Scenarios

• Scenario 1: An RDS Serverless instance has a fluctuating workload, which causes the hourly fees for RCUs and storage space to vary.

• Scenario 2: Intermittent usage, for example, purchasing an RDS Serverless instance for learning or testing and using it for only a few hours a day.

• Scenario 3: You use a mix of RDS Serverless instances and instances with defined specifications (subscription or pay-as-you-go). If the Serverless instance workload fluctuates, you can use a General-purpose Savings Plan to offset pay-as-you-go fees for the instances with defined specifications. You can then use an Elastic (Special Offer) Savings Plan to offset the fees for Serverless RCUs and storage space.

Offset rules

Deductible billing items

Fees for RCUs and storage space for RDS Serverless products.

Deductible amount

The committed spending amount does not directly offset RDS pay-as-you-go bills. Instead, a deductible amount is calculated based on the committed spending amount and the discount. This deductible amount is used to offset your RDS pay-as-you-go bills. The formula is as follows: $$Deductible\; amount=Total\; committed\; spend/\; 0.40$$ .

Stacking rules and offset order

• You can purchase multiple Elastic Savings Plans. Offsets are applied based on the expiration dates of the plans. The plan that expires first is applied first. If multiple plans have the same expiration date, the one that was purchased first is applied first.

• You can purchase both General-purpose and Elastic (Special Offer) Savings Plans. When offsets are applied, the General-purpose Savings Plan is applied first.

Offset examples

Assume you purchase one Elastic Savings Plan with a committed spending amount of CNY 500. The deductible amount is CNY 1,250 (500 / 0.4).

• Scenario A: You have a Serverless Basic Edition instance that uses a fixed 0.5 RCU and 20 GB of storage space per hour. The hourly fee for RCUs and storage space is CNY 0.2005 (CNY 0.333/RCU/hour * 0.5 RCU + CNY 0.0017/GB/hour * 20 GB), which is deducted from the deductible amount. After six months, a total of CNY 866.16 (CNY 0.2005/hour * 24 hours * 180 days) is deducted from the deductible amount. The remaining CNY 383.84 expires because the savings plan has ended.

• Scenario B: You have one Serverless high availability (HA) instance and one Serverless Basic Edition instance. The HA instance uses a fixed 2 RCUs and 100 GB of storage space per hour. The hourly fee for RCUs and storage space is CNY 0.836 (CNY 0.333/RCU/hour * 2 RCUs + CNY 0.0017/GB/hour * 100 GB), which amounts to a daily fee of CNY 20.064. The Basic Edition instance runs for 14 hours a day. During runtime, it uses 2 RCUs and 100 GB of storage space per hour, with an hourly fee of CNY 0.836. The instance is paused for the remaining 10 hours of the day. During this time, RCU billing stops, but the 100 GB of storage space is still billed at an hourly fee of CNY 0.17. The total daily fee for the Basic Edition instance is CNY 13.404. The deductible amount of the Elastic Savings Plan is expected to be fully used by the 38th day (CNY 1,250 / (CNY 20.064 + CNY 13.404)).

Estimating the committed spending amount

On the Cost Analysis page, you can view the total fees for RDS Serverless RCUs and storage space over the past six months. You can use this total as a reference to estimate your committed spending amount.

Savings plans cannot be changed or canceled after purchase. We recommend setting a low initial committed spending amount. When a savings plan is nearly depleted, you can purchase a new one.