Clarifications on invoicing for the month of January 2024

0

I checked the cost projection for the month of January 2024. I found the surprise of a USD 0.25 charge for the "Elastic Compute Cloud" service. It's obviously not for the value, but just to understand.

I only used the EC2 service and started configuring the SES service for which the verification of the "bandieragiallarovigo-odv.it" domain is missing I'm using the instance in the "Stockholm" region. I would like to know if these costs are chargeable monthly or only for this month. If I made a mistake, tell me where and how to intervene.

I am requesting clarification as I am managing the request on behalf of a voluntary and therefore non-profit association.

Thank you Moreno

3 Answers
2

The cost projection is a best-guess on what your charges will look like at the end of the month, based on your usage so far this month. It's not an invoice, and your actual invoice will be generated at the end of the month, and will bill you for what you have actually used.

You may still want to check that you don't have any EC2 instances that you don't know about by going to EC2 Global View https://console.aws.amazon.com/ec2globalview/home#

Give it a couple of minutes to populate and then check the items that might be chargeable

  • Instances are chargeable when they're running, stopped instances are not charged
  • Volumes are all chargeable, whether the instance they're attached to is running or stopped, or even if the volume is not attached to an instance
  • NAT Gateways are charged for each “NAT Gateway-hour" that your gateway is provisioned and available
  • Elastic IPs are chargeable when not attached to a running instance

Things like security groups, subnets, and so on aren't chargeable.

If you have taken any EBS snapshots then these don't appear in EC2 Global View but are still chargeable.

You can also go to Billing and Cost Management and select Bills on the left hand pane https://console.aws.amazon.com/billing/home#/bills

The right hand pane should open on the current billing period, scroll to the foot and expand to open [+]Elastic Compute Cloud and then expand whichever region(s) have incurred a charge this billing period, and you can see which items these are (e.g. it could be items like Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud running Linux/UNIX, EBS, and so on).

profile picture
EXPERT
Steve_M
answered 9 months ago
1

Hi Moreno,

Sorry for any confusion experienced! This document might give you some more options for research: (https://repost.aws/knowledge-center/resources-unexpected-charges). But, if you need to, you can certainly open a case directly with our Support team via: go.aws/support-center.

-Dino C.

AWS
MODERATOR
answered 9 months ago
0

Thanks Steve

I'm happy to find a friendly voice that tries to give me some explanations.

I looked on https://console.aws.amazon.com/billing/home#/bills and I found, by going into detail on "service charges", a charge related to "Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud running Linux/UNIX".

As an inexperienced person, I don't even know what this service is and how I could have triggered this unwanted service, which I certainly don't want.

I am taking advantage of the free plan for use of 750 hours in the month on behalf of a NON-PROFIT voluntary association to which I have given support to manage a small web application.

I wanted to ask you if I can block this service and if it could cause problems for the proper functioning of the application.

I hope you won't laugh at these statements, but I am new to the AWS world and therefore I may have inadvertently committed some operations during the customization phase of the instance on EC2.

The things I would like to be able to use from the AWS room are the management of my web application and the use of SES to be able to send emails from within my web application.

Can you explain to me what the "Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud running Linux/UNIX" service means which I am totally unaware of? Thank you for your patience and professional response. I remain available for any clarification.

Sincerely Moreno

I hope I haven't broken any rules of community behavior; I apologize in advance.

moreno
answered 9 months ago
  • No worries Moreno, we were all beginners at one time.

    I found, by going into detail on "service charges", a charge related to "Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud running Linux/UNIX". As an inexperienced person, I don't even know what this service is

    Put simply it's a server in the cloud, running a version of Unix or Linux. This would have been provisioned within the acocunt at some point in this calendar month, even if it was later stopped (and even terminated).

    I'd advise going to EC2 Global View https://console.aws.amazon.com/ec2globalview/home# and verifying whether there are any instances in any regions, or if they're all gone. If they're all gone that's great, if there are still any instances there then click on the text saying 1 of 1 (or whatever it says) to find out which region(s) these instances are in.

    I am taking advantage of the free plan for use of 750 hours

    Free tier gives you 750 hours worth of small EC2 instances, of type t2.micro (or t3.micro depending on the region) and if you stick within this limit then you won't be charged. A much fuller description is here https://repost.aws/knowledge-center/what-is-free-tier

    Advice for avoiding free tier charges are here https://repost.aws/knowledge-center/stop-future-free-tier-charges and https://repost.aws/knowledge-center/free-tier-charges

  • I wanted to ask you if I can block this service and if it could cause problems for the proper functioning of the application.

    First part - you can block the service by stopping users logging in and provisioning EC2 instances, but this may be over-complicating things for you https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSEC2/latest/UserGuide/iam-policies-for-amazon-ec2.html

    It's not really possible to "accidentally" spin up an EC2 instance anyway.

    As to whether it would cause problems with the functioning of your application, that can't be answered without a full understanding of what it is that your application does.

You are not logged in. Log in to post an answer.

A good answer clearly answers the question and provides constructive feedback and encourages professional growth in the question asker.

Guidelines for Answering Questions