Manage committed plans for worker pools

With a committed plan, you pay upfront for a worker pool’s nodes for a fixed term. Each pool in a cluster has its own plan. One cluster can run a committed pool for its steady capacity beside hourly pools that you resize as demand changes. You can put a pool on a committed plan when you create it, or move an hourly pool to one later. Either way, you choose what happens when the term ends. For how committed and hourly pools are billed, see Billing options for TIR Kubernetes.

Before you begin

• A role with the update permission on Kubernetes. See Roles and permissions.
• A cluster in the Ready or Worker Joined state.
• On a prepaid account, enough credit for the whole term. The prices for every plan are on E2E’s pricing page.

What a commitment fixes

Read these points before you commit a pool, because they hold for the whole term:

• You pay for the full term upfront, for the pool’s node count.
• You can resize or autoscale the pool only after the term ends. If you need more capacity, add another pool beside it.
• Deleting the pool, or the cluster, before the term ends gets you no refund.

Start a pool on On-Demand, learn the size its workload needs, and then move it to a committed plan.

Choose a committed plan for a new pool

When you add a worker pool, on the create form or with Add Worker Pool, choose a committed plan under Pricing plan. Its name is the number of days followed by Days Committed. The pool’s node count is then fixed for the whole committed period, and the dialog warns you of this.

Then choose a Commitment policy. It sets what happens when the term ends, on the date the form shows:

• Auto-renew the committed plan, the default, renews the term for the same number of days and nodes, at the price shown.
• Switch to hourly billing keeps the pool running and bills it by the hour once the term ends.

Before TIR creates the pool, check each committed resource, with its plan, policy, and end date, in Committed Plans Confirmation. TIR deducts the full amount upfront and refunds nothing if you delete early. Tick the box to accept this, and select Proceed.

The control plane can use a committed plan too. You choose it and its commitment policy on the create form, and the control plane keeps that policy as long as the cluster exists. For the rest of the form, see Create a Kubernetes cluster.

Move an hourly pool to a committed plan

You can move a pool that is Ready and has a fixed size. To commit an autoscaled pool, first give it a fixed size with Static resize; see Resize or autoscale a worker pool.

1. Open the cluster’s details page and select the Node Pool tab.
2. On the hourly pool’s row, select Convert to Committed Plan.
3. Under Committed plan, choose a term: a number of days at its price. If none is offered, the pool’s plan has hourly billing only.
4. Under Commitment policy, choose Auto-renew the committed plan or Switch to hourly billing.
5. Select Continue. In Committed Plans Confirmation, tick the box to accept the upfront charge and that you get no refund if you delete early, then select Proceed.

TIR charges the full term upfront. In the pool’s details, Plan Type is now the number of committed days, with its Commitment Policy. You can resize the pool only after the term ends.

Change what happens at the end of the term

You can change a committed worker pool’s policy during its term. It changes only what happens when the current term ends: the term keeps its length, and its upfront charge stays paid.

1. On the Node Pool tab, find the committed pool’s row and select Update Commitment Policy.
2. Under Commitment policy, choose the other policy.
3. Tick the box to confirm that the preference applies when the commitment ends, and select Update Policy.

TIR saves the policy.

What happens when the term ends

• With Auto-renew the committed plan, a new term starts if the account has enough credit. Otherwise, the pool moves to hourly billing instead.
• With Switch to hourly billing, the pool moves to its hourly plan and keeps running. From then on, you can resize or autoscale it again.

Check the plan

On the Node Pool tab, open the pool. Plan Type is the committed term, and Commitment Policy is what happens when it ends.

Your pool now runs on the billing you chose. For extra capacity during the term, add an hourly pool beside it; see Add and delete worker pools. To see how committed pools appear in your usage, see Billing options for TIR Kubernetes. If a conversion is refused for lack of credit, see Troubleshooting TIR Kubernetes.