Google has announced that it is going to adjust its infrastructure product and pricing framework to offer customers "more choice in how they pay for what they use" in addition to new and flexible SKUs with new product options and capabilities. The company said that the latest updates have been developed to "ensure better product fit" for the use cases of its customers across a broad range of workloads.
For Google Cloud products, some of the changes will offer low-priced alternatives and features while others will raise prices on particular products. The change in prices has been announced for certain storage, compute, and networking products. With these changes, customers will be able to optimize their spending depending on workload type and size or data portability requirements.
The specific changes that Google has introduced are:
Cloud Storage pricing changes for data mobility, including replication of data written to a dual- or multi-region storage bucket, and inter-region data access
Introduction of a new lower-cost archive snapshot option for Persistent Disk (PD), so that compliance/archiving use cases are charged less than compute-intensive DevOps workloads
New outbound data processing pricing for Cloud Load Balancing, in line with other leading cloud providers
New pricing for Network Topology, which will include Performance Dashboard within Network Intelligence Center at no additional charge
In order to get ready for the updates, Google suggested customers do the following:
Read through the Mandatory Service Announcement (MSA) sent on March 14.
Consider what actions, if any, they may want to take based on current storage, networking, and compute needs. Many of these changes may have simple choices associated with them.
Consider using the Storage Transfer Service to select the right Cloud Storage bucket locations. Storage Transfer Service will be available free-of-cost for transfers within Cloud Storage, starting April 2 until the end of the year.
Customers under contract can also discuss these changes with Google Cloud account representatives. Check out the pricing page for more information. The new prices will come into effect on October 1 and existing customers have been informed. Those with a contract won"t see a price hike until their next renewal.