Seth — I appreciate you being here to take feedback, and for the clarification as well. The very surprising email I’ve received this morning is very hazy on the details, and the docs linked from the email are not updated yet.
The main issue is that not charging for the control plane and charging for the control plane leads to two very different Kubernetes architectures, and as per your docs, those decisions made at the start are very much set in stone. You cannot change your cluster from a regional cluster to a single zone cluster for example. So you have customers who built their stacks taking into account your free control plane, and you’re turning the screws in by adding a cost for it — but they cannot change the type of their cluster to optimise their spend, since, per your docs, those decisions are set in stone. That’s entrapment.
You should keep existing clusters in the pricing model they’ve been built in, and apply this change for clusters created after today.
That said, many of us made a bet on GCP. For us in particular, we made a bet to the point that our SQL servers are on AWS, but we still switched to GCP for ‘better’ Kubernetes and for not nickel and diming, since AWS had a charge that looked like it was designed to convey that they’d much rather have you use their own stuff than Kubernetes. It is a relatively trivial amount, but it makes a world of difference in how it feels and you guys know more than anyone how much of these GCP vs AWS decisions are made based not on data sheets but for the ‘general feel’ for the lack of a better word.
AWS’ message is that they’re the staid, sort of old fashioned, but reliable business partner. GCP’s message, as of this morning, is stop using GCP.