Google Kubernetes Engine is introducing a cluster management fee on June 6

#1

Post by agoell » Wed, Mar 04, 2020, 5:20 PM UTC

EDIT: Link on Google's Official Documentation here https://cloud.google.com/kubernetes-engine/pricing

Just received an email from Google Cloud -

"On June 6, 2020, your Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) clusters will start accruing a management fee, with an exemption for all Anthos GKE clusters and one free zonal cluster.

Starting June 6, 2020, your GKE clusters will accrue a management fee of $0.10 per cluster per hour, irrespective of cluster size and topology.

We’re making some changes to the way we offer Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE). Starting June 6, 2020, your GKE clusters will accrue a management fee of $0.10 per cluster per hour, irrespective of cluster size and topology. We’re also introducing a Service Level Agreement (SLA) that’s financially backed with a guaranteed availability of 99.95% for regional clusters and 99.5% for zonal clusters running a version of GKE available through the Stable release channel. Below, you’ll find additional details about the new SLA and information to help you reduce your costs."

Google Kubernetes Engine is introducing a cluster management fee on June 6
cloud.google.com

Re: Google Kubernetes Engine is introducing a cluster management fee on June 6

#2

Post by mchiang » Wed, Mar 04, 2020, 5:24 PM UTC

I haven’t done cost calculations yet, but this might actually make me want to explore to EKS pricing. I do love the experience of GKE.

Re: Google Kubernetes Engine is introducing a cluster management fee on June 6

#3

Post by MightySCollins » Wed, Mar 04, 2020, 5:25 PM UTC

I am really disappointed by this. One of the reasons we moved to GCP from AWS was the ability to create multiple clusters at no extra charge. Now it looks like the pricing matches EKS.

Re: Google Kubernetes Engine is introducing a cluster management fee on June 6

#4

Post by sethvargo » Wed, Mar 04, 2020, 5:26 PM UTC

Hey everyone - Seth from Google here. Please let us know if you have any questions! You can learn more about the pricing changes at https://cloud.google.com/kubernetes-engine/pricing.

Re: Google Kubernetes Engine is introducing a cluster management fee on June 6

#5

Post by stevencorona » Wed, Mar 04, 2020, 5:29 PM UTC

Wow, this is a huge bummer. A lot of our infrastructure assumptions have been based around having several small GKE clusters.

Re: Google Kubernetes Engine is introducing a cluster management fee on June 6

#6

Post by sladey » Wed, Mar 04, 2020, 5:29 PM UTC

This is really disappointing. GKE was a staple amongst Kubernetes adoption, not only for the feature-set but also that there were no overhead costs.

I hope GCP re-thinks this.

Re: Google Kubernetes Engine is introducing a cluster management fee on June 6

#7

Post by sethvargo » Wed, Mar 04, 2020, 5:29 PM UTC

mchiang wrote: post #2

I haven’t done cost calculations yet, but this might actually make me want to explore to EKS pricing. I do love the experience of GKE.

You don't need to do the calculations by hand :). We've updated our pricing tool to account for these changes: https://cloud.google.com/products/calculator#tab=container.

Re: Google Kubernetes Engine is introducing a cluster management fee on June 6

#8

Post by jerendy92 » Wed, Mar 04, 2020, 5:30 PM UTC

Time to dump GCP then. It's not even that the fee is that large, but rather that this is once again Google failing on a long term commitment and shafting those on their platform once again. This was one of the benefits that was pushed by their sales team when they called us up to market GCP over AWS and their EKS offering. Doesn't matter that they are price matching, Google's inability to actually commit to long term support, servicing, pricing or features across any of their products is tiresome. Time to move business elsewhere to AWS or Azure. They may be more expensive, but at least we know what we are paying for, and that it's going to stay that way for a significant length of time.

Re: Google Kubernetes Engine is introducing a cluster management fee on June 6

#9

Post by minimaxir » Wed, Mar 04, 2020, 5:31 PM UTC

I think this is fair: for hobbyists, a free zonal cluster is sufficient and you probably wouldn't use more than one cluster. For businesses/revenue drivers, the $7.30/mo/cluster is nothing (EDIT: actually $73/mo/cluster, which may be a tougher sell but if the business is in a case where it benefits from Kubernetes, it's still likely insignificant relative to the cost of actually running the VMs on it )

Re: Google Kubernetes Engine is introducing a cluster management fee on June 6

#10

Post by sethvargo » Wed, Mar 04, 2020, 5:32 PM UTC

jerendy92 wrote: post #8

Time to dump GCP then. It's not even that the fee is that large, but rather that this is once again Google failing on a long term commitment and shafting those on their platform once again. This was one of the benefits that was pushed by their sales team when they called us up to market GCP over AWS and their EKS offering. Doesn't matter that they are price matching, Google's inability to actually commit to long term…

Thank you for the feedback.

> Google's inability to actually commit to long term support...

This is _exactly_ what Google is doing in this case. We are providing an SLA - a legal agreement of availability and support. These changes introduce a guaranteed availability of the management control plane.