Maximizing SLA Credits
Some Ways To Get GCP Credit
Google Cloud credits are like a friendly nudge from Google to give their Cloud Platform a whirl, without dipping into your wallet. Much like the welcome mats laid out by Amazon and Microsoft, Google’s got its own way of saying “Come on in and play around!” Whether you’re tinkering with a personal project or putting a proof-of-concept through its paces, Google’s got some deals to get you started for free. They also want to make sure that they earn your trust and ensure that if you are running mission critical applications they’ve got your back if there is an outage.
Here’s the lowdown on Google Cloud Credits:
- Kick-off with $300: Newbies get $300 credits for a whole year to mess around with any Google Cloud goodies.
- Always Free Stuff: Beyond the trial, Google keeps the love coming with access to a bunch of Google Cloud tools for zilch, forever (or until Google decides otherwise).
- Service Level Agreement Guarantee: A contract between a service provider and a client that outlines the service, standards, and metrics to measure the performance.
Free Stuff
- It’s the cool next step after your trial, letting you keep using some Google Cloud services without spending a dime.
- You get a set amount of resources every month. It’s a “use it or lose it” gig—don’t expect any rollovers.
- It’s not the whole Google Cloud kitchen, but essentials like Compute Engine, Cloud Storage, and Big Query are on the house. Just keep an eye on those limits to avoid surprise bills.
SLA Guarantee
- An SLA, or service level agreement, is basically a pinky promise between you and your tech provider, detailing the kind of service they swear to give you. It covers stuff like how often they’ll be up and running (uptime), how quick they deliver, how fast they respond to your cries for help, and how swiftly they fix things. It’s definitely worth snooping around their documentation for the nitty-gritty.
- Monthly Uptime Service Credit Percentage (Example)
- Less than 99.99% but greater than or equal to 99.0% -10%
- Less than 99.0% but greater than or equal to 95.0% – 25%
- Less than 95.0% – 100%
Ever wondered how to calculate SLA credit for GCP?
Let’s take a hypothetical situation. How would I calculate an estimated SLA if my application used services deployed on 1,000 Google Compute Engine instances? Assuming that the services were dependent on each other, would the estimated downtime per year of my application be 1,000 * 0.0001 = 0.10 or 10% per year?
SLA is not for only one VM instance, as per official documentation
“For virtual machine instances: Loss of external connectivity or persistent disk access for all running instances, when Instances are placed across two or more Zones in the same Region.”
So the SLA will be tied to a specific zone. If that zone goes down for .01% of the month, that would be like 4:38 minutes.
If all of this is confusing you’re not alone. You can also use software to help navigate the nuance with Priz.ai. They take the guess work out of the complexity and make it easy for you to calculate your cloud credit refund with a couple clicks of the mouse.
For more information on scenarios and tools that could be useful check out these links:
SLA Downtime Credit Simplified