On Fri, Oct 26, 2012 at 11:20:40AM -0400, Scott Seago wrote: > On 10/26/2012 11:06 AM, Martin Povolny wrote: > > > >Notes and further work > >---------------------- > > > >The entering of cost estimates for chargeables in Conductor has to be > >detailed. > > > >In the first iteration we care only about backend hardware profile so we have > >to provide a list of available hardware profiles per cloud provider with the > >cost and provide a form to enter the costs. > This isn't an exhaustive commentary on the proposal, but I wanted to make > sure that the HWP variability is taken into account here in this design. A > HWP can be static (like on ec2 -- a given HWP has a precise amount of ram > and CPU), or dynamic -- all HWP params can be any one of three types: > a) fixed (exactly 1 CPU) > b) enum (1 or 2 CPUs; i386 or x8_64; etc) > c) range (2-4 CPUs; 512 MB-32 GB) > > In fact, a provider with a single HWP with range params can cover a greater > range of possible sizes than a provider with a long list of static HWPs. > > The other confusing factor is that HWP storage doesn't necessarily mean the > same thing across providers. > > The point is we can't simply assign a single cost factor to a hardware > profile -- that won't work for providers that primarily handle sizing > differences by varying HWP params rather than switching to a completely > different hardware profile. Instead, we may need to model cost in terms of > cost per CPU unit+cost for memory -- it's also possible that it's something > more complex -- a per-HWP cost, per CPU cost above some baseline CPU value, > per MB memory cost above some baseline memory value, and the same with > storage. That way we handle static HWPs easily enough -- the > per-CPU/memory/storage cost bits can just be left alone, but the variable > HWPs are handled too. > > Scott
I see the need to address various types of things the user might be billed for. Therefor I came with the concept of "chargeable". In the first iteration the only chargeable type is the hardware profile as at EC2. Next, the chargeable might be storage attached, IP assigned. I can address the specific case you come up with either this way: 1) the hardware_profile chargeable would cost 0 2) the CPU and RAM would be separate chargeables with their specific costs Also I would be grateful if you can point me to a cloud provider that has a billing schema that you suggest so that I can take a look and verify my ideas. One more important thing has to be said clearly: We aim for cost estimate not for billing. Getting the numbers right would be almost impossible given the many variables. > > >There's no official API for getting cost information. > > > >EC2 has an unofficial page that serves basic cost information in JSON. EC2 > >also > >provides billing information in form of CSV files. Further means of > >retrieving > >cost and billing information have to be researched. > > > >We probably should include some values from the most popular providers in the > >installation packages. > > > -- Martin Povolny <[email protected]> tel. +420 777714458
