Billing Overview

VMRack Object Storage adopts a simple and transparent Pay-As-You-Go billing model, coupled with a monthly free quota, making every penny of your investment clear and visible. This chapter uses practical cases to help you understand the billing logic.

Billing Mode

1.Pay As You Go: No upfront fees required. The system generates bills based on your actual storage capacity and network traffic usage, and automatically deducts the amount from your Account Credit.

2.Hourly Billing (Network Traffic): The billing cycle for network traffic is 1 hour. The system settles the bill for the previous hour (09:00:00-09:59:59) at every whole hour (e.g., 10:00:00).

• Billing Precision: The generated bill amount is accurate to 4 decimal places (e.g., $0.5188).

• Actual Deduction: Deductions are executed only to the 2nd decimal place ("cents").

• Unsettled Amount: The 3rd and 4th decimal places (less than 1 cent) are not deducted temporarily but are automatically added to your "Unsettled Amount".

3.Daily Billing (Storage Capacity): The billing cycle for storage capacity is 1 day. The system settles the bill for the previous day (00:00:00 to the end of the day) at 00:00 every day.

•  Billing Precision: The generated bill amount is accurate to 4 decimal places (e.g., $0.5188).

• Actual Deduction: Deductions are executed only to the 2nd decimal place ("cents").

• Unsettled Amount: The 3rd and 4th decimal places (less than 1 cent) are not deducted temporarily but are automatically added to your "Unsettled Amount".

4.Monthly Unified Settlement: The system performs a "Summary Settlement" of all "Unsettled Amounts" from the previous month on the 1st of each month.

•  Summary Calculation: Sums up the hourly (Traffic) and daily (Storage) unsettled balances generated in the previous month.

• Final Deduction: The summarized total is rounded to 2 decimal places for a one-time deduction.

• Waived Amount: If the summarized result still has remainders in the 3rd or 4th decimal places, the system directly waives (writes off) this amount, and no payment is required.

Minimum Storage Duration & Early Deletion Fee

To balance storage costs, Low Frequency Storage files have a specific minimum storage duration of 30 days. If you perform the following operations within 30 days of uploading a file, the system will charge an early deletion fee:

• Delete File: Directly delete files stored for less than 30 days.

• Modify Storage Class: Changing files stored for less than 30 days to other storage classes (considered as early deletion).

The penalty amount equals the fee for the remaining storage days of the file, i.e.:

Billing Precision

To ensure fairness and transparency in billing, we follow these standards:

• Metering Unit: Capacity and Traffic are billed in GB (1GB = 1024MB).

Free Tier

To lower the trial cost for users, VMRack provides competitive monthly free quotas for all users.

Refresh Mechanism: Quota automatically refreshes at 0:00 on the 1st of each calendar month. Unused quota cannot be rolled over to the next month.

Deduction Rule: The free quota is prioritized for deduction during settlement; billing starts for the excess part only after the free quota is exhausted.

Billing Example

To help you understand the logic of mixed settlement (Storage + Traffic), we simulate a user (User A) starting the service on January 1st.

1.Scenario Setup

User Rights: Has 5 GB of monthly free Standard Storage quota; 10 GB of monthly free Downstream Traffic quota.Assumed Price: High Performance $0.0016 / GB (Daily), Standard $0.0004 / GB (Daily), Low Frequency $0.0003 / GB (Daily), Downstream Traffic $0.0200 / GB (Note: This price is for example only; please refer to the system for actual pricing.).

2.Usage Record User A performed the following operations on the morning of January 1st:

• 09:00:00 ~ 09:59:59 : Business online, consumed 8 GB downstream traffic.

• 10:00:00 ~ 10:59:59 : Business growth, consumed another 5 GB traffic.

• 11:00:00 ~ 11:59:59 : Traffic stabilized, generated 2488 MB traffic.

• All Day: The daily peak storage volume of Standard Storage data reached 50 GB.Cost Breakdown

3.Network Traffic Breakdown (Hourly Settlement):

4.Storage Capacity Breakdown (Daily Settlement):

5.Bill Analysis

6.Monthly Settlement Assuming User A only has the above transactions, on the 1st of the next month, the system will process the accumulated unsettled amounts:

• Total Unsettled: $0.0085 (Traffic) + $0.0060 (Storage) = $0.0145.

• Actual Deduction: The summarized amount exceeds 1 cent, system deducts $0.01.

• Waived Amount: The remaining remainder of $0.0045 is directly waived, and the user does not need to pay it.

Note: The above storage and traffic fees are example data to simplify the explanation of billing rules. Please refer to the system for actual unit prices!

Bill Inquiry

Bills are typically generated one hour after the end of the current billing cycle. The specific issuance time is subject to system processing. Inquiry method:

• Log in to the console, pull down the Avatar menu in the top right, and select Billing.

• In the left navigation bar, select Pay-As-You-Go Bill to view detailed statements and billing charges.

Insufficient Account Credit Warning

When the account credit is less than $20.00, the platform will send message and email notifications to remind you. To avoid service unavailability caused by arrears, please pay attention to the account credit consumption and ensure sufficient account credit.
On the Account Credit page, you can configure the alert settings and threshold for credit warnings. 

Arrears & Resource Reclamation

Please pay close attention to your account credit status to avoid business impact caused by arrears.

1.Arrears Trigger:

• When the system detects that your account credit is insufficient to pay the current bill (Account Credit < 0), it will enter an arrears state.

2.Suspension Handling:

• The system will automatically stop access and download for all storage buckets under the account.

• You will be unable to enter the Object Storage console related pages (including bucket management and data statistics).

• Note: If the arrears period exceeds 30 days without recharging, the system will consider it as abandoning the service and will automatically execute the resource reclamation program. Your data in buckets will be permanently destroyed and cannot be recovered.

3.Service Recovery:

• Once you recharge and settle the arrears (i.e., Account Credit becomes positive), the system will automatically restore the previously stopped cloud storage services.

• You can immediately re-enter the console for management operations.