We are going to start collecting charges for Stopped Machines RootFS starting April 25th

So, if its docker, isnt alpine/ubuntu 20/debian 11 12 base image (150-400MB) shared between vast majority of VMs? Does the RootFS count all these identical docker layers multiple times? You cant start Windows, or FreeBSD on a Fly VM, there are only 4 OSes total that can boot on Fly.

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I don’t think the kernel is included in the root filesystem calculation (I’m going from memory here so don’t get too mad if I turn out to be wrong). Our orchestration code does an LVM checkout of the container image, and provides our hypervisor with essentially a hard link to the kernel, separately. The stuff we’re storing for your image doesn’t include the core “operating system”.

Could anyone tell me if I will have to pay anything from April onwards? I still don’t understand this billing system…

Hi @muccioli

Im shipping right now an improvement to the page you screenshotted that will add RootFS values to the machine lines.

Give your machine is started (aka running) I believe you are not collecting any idle usage so probably won’t need to worry.

We also plan on sending emails to customer after a full invoice month to tell customers how much they’d have after a month past.

Thank you.
Beste Regards

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@lubien You state that “We also have been discounting up to $5.00 of usage on invoices so that means if you have 3 stopped machines for the entire month each having 1GB of RootFS usage that is $0.45 so far from breaking your free allowances.”.

Just to be sure: Does that mean that if my billing per month does not exceed $5.00 per month I have to pay nothing? Or is that meant in the way that you don’t bill before $5.00 are exceeded in the sense that if one uses $0.51 of machines for 10 months, one will be billed? In that case that would be the end of free allowances wouldn’t it?

Just to be clear currently it looks like my monthly billing with the new charging scheme will be more around $0.60 per month, however I want to know whether I will be able to use fly.io for free only for some months after the changes or longer term.

Since this applies to machines and not apps, if I’m understanding this correctly, if I have an app that autoscales to three (3) machines, each consuming 1GB rootfs and one (1) is running and two (2) are stopped, I will get charged 1GB/stopped-machine ✕ 2 stopped-machines ✕ $0.15/GB = $0.30 (since two are stopped) and not $0.15?

So machines under the same app, using the same image will get charged separately and not “deduplicated”?

That’s right; the root file system for each Machine sits on its host’s SSD when it’s stopped, ready to be booted. If you have three Machines, there are three rootfs taking up space (not necessarily on the same host).

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Hi @RaoulLuque !

I can see you’re on the old Hobby Plan which is $0/mo. We have our free allowances that let you run 3 machines 24/7 AND also the waiving of invoices that are lower than $5 (thats not going change now) so you should be good to go with zero charges. If things ever change on your account we will make sure to communicate with a big heads up too but if you feel more comfortable you can also let your machines just run 24/7.

Screenshot 2024-01-31 at 11.23.18 AM

So to make it absolutely clear, if this number on your dashboard does not exceed $5, you are not charged anything. If, for instance, it hits 5.50, you are charged for the full amount of $5.50, not 0.50. So its not $5 of credit, its a minimum balance before they will charge your CC.

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Thanks for the explanation : ) In that case I am happy to continue using fly to host my hobby projects :sunny:

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I should also point out that, from a usage perspective, that pricing you see is from my dashboard. I have 11 apps total, and one is a database cluster. Three of the apps and the database are always running. So hopefully that gives you an example of how things scale price-wise.

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@lubien I understand that there is now a legacy plan and a newer hobby plan. Do my previous comments hold true for both of those plans?

Hey @atridad. Your plan should remain as it has been.

We’ve changed our offering for new organizations, but the legacy hobby plan for existing organizations remains the same. This is all to say that in your specific case your legacy hobby account will remain as is (as long as you don’t upgrade your plan). Any new organizations you create will be on our current hobby plan or one of our our other plans (launch, scale).

@lubien can you check this ?

fly bill preview is calculating RootFS for 24/7 running machines . For testing this, I have created a test app with shared-cpu-1x 256mb vm 17 hours ago . And I have attach the screenshots.

Note: I am on fly Legacy Hobby Plan
App info :
Name: idle-machine-test
Url: https://idle-machine-test.fly.dev
Machine : Machine e78464ea594583 (frosty-dawn-909)

in the fly.toml file i have disable auto_stop_machines .

Attachments:

  • fly.toml
app = 'idle-machine-test'
primary_region = 'sin'

[build]

[http_service]
  internal_port = 3000
  force_https = true
  auto_stop_machines = false
  auto_start_machines = false
  min_machines_running = 0
  processes = ['app']

[[vm]]
  size = 'shared-cpu-1x'
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Ill investigate this asap, thanks for sharing! Also just letting everyone this preview charge has no contact to our billing system, its just a preview so rest assured this will not reflect any invoices.

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Just wanted to acknowledge there’s some errors in our usage job and we will be shipping a fix asap. We probably won’t be backfilling so previous usages since this processes millions of events but moving forward it should give more accurate values. Also reiterating that there’s no billing happening yet, so no money is affected, just the preview stuff.

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Thanks for the update @lubien .

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Hi, free tier (legacy hobbyst) here. So if I change my .toml file to

auto_stop_machines = false auto_start_machines = false

Does this mean that my machine will now run 24/7 and prevent me from being charged of the stopped machines? I have a 0.3 cent bill at the moment and since i only have a small node-ts app form in a website (that is not always used) this is the only way to prevent my machine from being stopped?

@AngelinDisguise i talked with support and they said it will be free of charge. that 0.3 you see is just a preview

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