AWS - Pricing, Billing FAQ
AWS - Pricing, Billing FAQ
UW-Madison AWS cost structure
Updated March 1, 2019 at completion of pilot. See AWS - Service Description
The net cost to campus customers will be equal to Amazon's published rates for AWS, but will include a network egress waiver:
- Amazon's current rates for individual AWS services can be found on Amazon's Cloud Services Pricing page
- Amazon provides a cost calculator. The cloud team also likes some tooling like Gartner's Comparing Public Cloud solutions
- The public cloud team can help with developing estimates, advising on cost effective uses cloud and monitoring and optimizing your spend. Contact the Public Cloud Team
Network egress waiver (costs for data traffic out of AWS)
UW's AWS contract has a a waiver for charges related to moving data back out of AWS, to help combat vendor lock in. This is through our affiliation with Internet2
The waiver is calculated based on University of Wisconsin's total AWS bill as an organization for all AWS services.
- All network egress charges up to an amount equaling 15% of the total bill we be waived.
- Example 1: If the UW's total monthly fees would have been $1000, but $50 of those fees were network egress, the final bill would be $950, as all network egress fees would be waived.
- Example 2: If the UW's total monthly fees would have been $1000, but $150 of those fees were network egress, the customer's final bill would be $850, as all network egress fees would be waived.
- Example 3: If the UW's total monthly fees would have been $1000, but $250 of those fees were network egress, the customer's final bill would be $850, as only $150 of network egress fees would be waived.
- To be eligible for the waiver, an account must meet some basic requirements such as primarily using the Internet2 Network for connectivity. The account also cannot be used for specifically bandwidth intensive applications (e.g., media streaming or MOOCs).
- Practically, this has meant most Internet2 schools do not pay egress charges the vast majority of their operating time. If you expect to need to move large amounts of data ( > 100s of TB in a single month) contact us for specific on the current waiver levels and data export strategies.
Business Level Support
- Accounts that have opted in to Business Level Support, have a support charge based on 10% of Amazon retail spend
Internet2 Discounts
- DLT, the campus reseller for AWS, discounts AWS pricing 5% as part of the Internet2 agreement with Amazon.
- UW-Madison Public Cloud applies a 5% overhead surcharge to the DLT rate (excluding any DLT Support charges) to recover a portion of its costs, including security & monitoring tooling provided to all accounts.
- The net cost to campus customers will be not exceed to Amazon's published rates for AWS, but will include a 15% network egress waiver, so will typically be discounted
- The 5% surcharge is currently an estimated rate. Data will be collected on this charge this fiscal year and may be adjusted up or down in the future based on actual costs.
Free Tier
UW-Madison AWS accounts are not eligible for the AWS Free Tier.
Using Research Grant Funding for Cloud Services
Cloud computing (AWS, Azure or GCP) through UW contracts can be funded by research grant funds using a DoIT Number, similar to other IT expenditures (DoIT Numbers - Overview)
Customers are responsible for ensuring that any grant funds used to pay for public cloud services is done in accordance with Research and Sponsored Programs (RSP) policy and federal requirements (2 CFR 200 Subpart E). Basic guidance on allowable direct costs can be found here. It is recommended that any customers with questions about using a grant to pay for cloud computing contact RSP for guidance.
If you have any questions, please Contact the Public Cloud Team
Billing
Customers can elect to receive a billing alert using CloudWatch whenever their monthly spend reaches a specified maximum value. Please note that CloudWatch billing alarms only provide a rough estimate of current monthly spend. They do not represent actual spend at any given point in time and numbers may be skewed due to reserved instance usage and service credits/grants applied to any account. To update the value associated with your account's billing alarms, Contact the Public Cloud Team
DLT bills UW-Madison at the end of the month following a billing cycle, however, campus customers won't receive a bill until the end of the following month (e.g., August charges won't be billed to a customer until October).
Additional details