This is penny wise pound foolish GCP.
Google Kubernetes Engine is introducing a cluster management fee on June 6
91–100 of 633 posts
Re: Google Kubernetes Engine is introducing a cluster management fee on June 6
#92Earlier quoted context omitted.
Different companies make money using different approaches and it's perfectly valid to be upset at the approach a particular company is taking. Just because they provide a service doesn't mean they'll try to f * you over at every chance. For some it's bad long term business to do that. AWS, for example, begins with high prices and then lowers them over time. It costs money but you know the maximum. Google seems to be…
> AWS, for example, begins with high prices and then lowers them over time. It costs money but you know the maximum. Past performance is no guarantee of future benevolence or reasonable behavior.
Same goes for metal, your data center can suddenly increase your prices massively or go bankrupt.
Re: Google Kubernetes Engine is introducing a cluster management fee on June 6
#93This is awful - I don’t think GCP is fully aware of their position in the market as the second, inferior choice. I took a bet on the underdog by using GCP and they bit me back in return. Especially considering their ‘default’ kubernetes config automatically sets you up with three(!) control planes in replication, that’s, as far as I understand, $~300 added to our monthly bill, for nothing. Oh, and per their docs, thr…
Thank you for the feedback. The management fee is per cluster. You are not billed for replicated control planes. You can use the pricing calculator at https://cloud.google.com/products/calculator#tab=container to model pricing, but it should work out to $73/mo regardless of nodes or cluster size (again, because it's charged per-cluster). There's also one completely free zonal cluster for hobbyist projects.
We currently spin up dev clusters with a single node. $73/mo is going to basically double the cost of all of these..
Re: Google Kubernetes Engine is introducing a cluster management fee on June 6
#94This is awful - I don’t think GCP is fully aware of their position in the market as the second, inferior choice. I took a bet on the underdog by using GCP and they bit me back in return. Especially considering their ‘default’ kubernetes config automatically sets you up with three(!) control planes in replication, that’s, as far as I understand, $~300 added to our monthly bill, for nothing. Oh, and per their docs, thr…
The 'cluster control plane is free' selling point was basically the _only_ thing I saw from all the different groups I worked with which was in GKE's favor. Yes you can get one free cluster but anyone serious about using Kubernetes would have _at least_ two clusters (a prod and non-prod staging cluster), so unless you're a true hobbyist (and the use case for K8s in that realm is pretty slim unless it's to backstop work projects) this effectively means you're going to pay as much for GKE cluster control planes than you do for EKS.
Re: Google Kubernetes Engine is introducing a cluster management fee on June 6
#95Note: Azure does not charge a master/cluster management fee (bias disclosure I work for Microsoft)
It wouldn't surprise me if Azure charges for control plane at some point. Seems like EKS and GKE can get away with charging so why not...
Re: Google Kubernetes Engine is introducing a cluster management fee on June 6
#96Note: Azure does not charge a master/cluster management fee (bias disclosure I work for Microsoft)
Attempting to capitalize on a competitor's announcement isn't cool and doesn't look great.
Re: Google Kubernetes Engine is introducing a cluster management fee on June 6
#97Oh, so now in addition to Google's reputation for killing services, GCP wants a reputation for raising prices?
They already had this reputation.
Re: Google Kubernetes Engine is introducing a cluster management fee on June 6
#98Earlier quoted context omitted.
> AWS, for example, begins with high prices and then lowers them over time. It costs money but you know the maximum. Past performance is no guarantee of future benevolence or reasonable behavior.
Same goes for metal, your data center can suddenly increase your prices massively or go bankrupt.
For sure! That's why I said, "Don't marry yourself to a provider, stay portable". Compute is a commodity, treat it as such.
Re: Google Kubernetes Engine is introducing a cluster management fee on June 6
#99Earlier quoted context omitted.
It depends entirely on how a firm has their infrastructure set up - if you have small cluster(s) per client for isolation/compliance purposes, you end up with, for example with 250 clients, each one using, say, 1000 billable hours/month: 250 * 0.1 * 1000 = $25,000/month. This is quite the price hike for something that was a) free until now. b) Not a service that warrants such a fee given that it uses existing (GCE) r…
You keep noting how "easy" it is to provision and manage a Kubernetes cluster. From experience, properly securing and maintaining a Kubernetes cluster is a multi-person full-time job.
We already do provision clusters, using the aforementioned tools. There is some setup involved, but once done, provisioning and upgrade is relatively simple. Indeed, we used to exclusively provision and upgrade via Terraform/Ansible. When we started using GCP, any data that could be stored by a US company without causing compliance issues was offloaded to GCP over other providers due to the auto provisioning/management at no cost.
If you guys find it hard to maintain/upgrade clusters, that's your business. All I am saying is that as a company giving you business, with this change, you are now no longer the cheapest, most reliable or most convenient. As a result, we will be moving to provision instances with other providers from now on.
Re: Google Kubernetes Engine is introducing a cluster management fee on June 6
#100Earlier quoted context omitted.
Thank you for the feedback. The management fee is per cluster. You are not billed for replicated control planes. You can use the pricing calculator at https://cloud.google.com/products/calculator#tab=container to model pricing, but it should work out to $73/mo regardless of nodes or cluster size (again, because it's charged per-cluster). There's also one completely free zonal cluster for hobbyist projects.
We currently spin up dev clusters with a single node. $73/mo is going to basically double the cost of all of these..
This highlights a sorta-weird consequence of this pricing change: suddenly pricing incentivizes you to use namespacing instead of clusters for separating environments.
(As a security person: ugh.)