Cloud Storage Pricing FAQ!
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1: How much does BIPmd Red HOT NVMe cloud storage cost?
BIPmd NVMe is priced at $23.96 TB/month (which is based on $.02396 GB/month) with no additional charges for egress or API requests. This pricing applies to all current BIPmd NVMe service regions. This pricing does not include taxes or additional services such as BIPmd’s premium support plan.
2: I was a BIPmd customer prior the implementation of the $23.96 per TB/month NVMe pricing plan on November 1, 2020 – what pricing model applies to my use case?
BIPmd will automatically upgrade you to the new red hot all NVMe storage and honor your previous pricing model for as long as you remain a BIPmd customer.
3: Does BIPmd have any minimum monthly storage charges or minimal storage retention periods?
BIPmd has a minimum monthly charge associated with 1 TB of NVMe storage ($23.96/month). If you store less than 1 TB of active NVMe storage in your account, your total charge will still be $23.96/month.
BIPmd also has a minimum 90 day storage retention period that means stored objects that are deleted before they have been stored with BIPmd for 90 days will incur a pro-rated charge equal to the storage charge for the remaining days (see FAQ#6 for more details). This policy is comparable to the minimum storage charge period applicable to some of the AWS and other object storage services.
4: How do I know if BIPmd’s free egress pricing model is a fit for my use case?
BIPmd’s free egress pricing model is designed for use cases where you store your data in service and you access this data at a reasonable rate. If your use case creates an unreasonable burden on our infrastructure, we will work you on an alternative pricing model.
We often get asked what is your definition of ‘reasonable rate’ and/or ‘unreasonable burden’. To answer this question, it’s best to consider these guidelines:
If your monthly downloads (egress) are less than or equal to your active storage volume, then your storage use case is a good fit for BIPmd’s free egress pricing model.
If your monthly downloads (egress) are greater than your active storage volume, then your storage use case is not a good fit for BIP’s free egress pricing model (and you may need to work with us on an alternative model)
For example, if you store 50 TB with BIPmd and download 50 TB or less within a monthly billing cycle, then your storage use case is a good fit for our free egress pricing model. If your monthly downloads exceed 50 TB, then your use case is not a good fit for this pricing model.
If your storage use case exceeds the guidelines of our free egress pricing model on a regular basis, we reserve the right to work with you on an alternative pricing model and/or limit your egress traffic. These actions would be taken after informing you of the condition via a customer service notification. Please note we often have excess egress bandwidth available for customer usage and it is our goal to not apply any egress limits except in cases of where the egress used regularly exceeds our guidelines.
5: How are my BIPmd usage charges calculated?
The BIPmd usage charges are calculated in accordance with the terms described below.
Timed Active Storage: This item is associated with the amount active storage that is stored with BIPmd for the billing cycle. The unit price of $.00079 per GB per day is based on BIPmd’s published storage charge of $.0237 per GB per month divided by 30 days. BIPmd always bills on a 30-day cycle (regardless of the length of the month or when the billing cycle starts).
Minimum Active Storage (if applicable): In the event the Timed Active Storage charge is less than $23.96, a charge for the difference between BIPmd’s $23.96 monthly minimum and the monthly Timed Active Storage is applied. Timed Deleted Storage (described below) does not count in the calculation of whether BIPmd’s minimum 1 TB per month requirement is met.
Timed Deleted Storage: This item is associated with the amount of deleted storage that has not yet reached the 90-day minimum storage charge with BIPmd for the billing cycle. BIPmd charges a minimum of 90 days for any storage object. This policy is comparable to the minimum storage charge period applicable to some of AWS’s object storage services. The unit price for timed deleted storage is the same as the unit price for timed active storage. For more details on how Timed Deleted Storage works, please see FAQ#6.
Data Transfer (Out): This item is associated with the amount of data (storage data and the data consumed by API calls) that leave (egress) the BIPmd Service. With BIPmd’s free egress pricing model, we do not charge for data transfer (out).
For more info on how to understand BIPmd's usage charges, please review this section of our knowledge base.
6: Can you provide more details on BIPmd’s 90 day minimum storage policy? Given this policy, when does it make sense (or not make sense) to use BIPmd's vs. AWS S3 for my storage use case?
As explained in FAQ#3, BIPmd has a minimum 90 day storage retention period that means stored objects that are deleted before they have been stored with BIPmd for 90 days will incur a pro-rated charge equal to the storage charge for the remaining days. This policy is comparable to the minimum storage charge period applicable to some AWS storage classes.
To better understand how the 90 day minimum storage policy works, let’s consider an example.
- An object is stored in BIPmd on Day 1
- On Day 16, this object is deleted from BIPmd
In this example, you have a scenario where you will billed for:
- 15 days of Active Storage
- 75 days of Deleted Storage
On a related note, we sometimes get asked about the impact of BIPmd’s 90 day minimum retention period on our cost comparisons with AWS S3. Although some AWS storage classes (i.e. AWS Glacier) have similar minimum retention policies, AWS S3 ‘standard’ does not. The best way to answer this question is to compare the costs when 100 TB is stored in BIPmd and AWS S3.
If you delete the 100 TB of storage in less than 23 days, BIPmd will be more expensive than AWS S3. However, if you store the 100 TB of data for more than 23 days, BIPmd will be less expensive than AWS S3. After the first year, AWS S3 is ~4x more expensive than BIPmd (and that is before you include the extra charges that AWS applies for egress and API requests).
In summary, if you have data that you only need to keep for short periods of time before deletion, then it may be more cost effective for you to keep this data in AWS. However, as shown in this example, if you keep the data for more than 23 days, BIPmd is the more cost effective solution.