Committed use discounts

This page describes how committed use discounts work with Google Cloud VMware Engine.

What are VMware Engine committed use discounts?

Committed use discounts (CUDs) for VMware Engine provide deeply-discounted prices in exchange for committing to continuously use VMware Engine nodes in a particular region for a one- or three-year term.

VMware Engine CUDs are ideal for workloads with predictable resource needs. You commit to a consistent amount of usage, measured in $/hour of equivalent on-demand spend, for a one- or three-year term. In exchange, you receive a discounted rate on the applicable usage your commitment covers.

VMware Engine CUD agreement type

VMware Engine gives you the following commitment options for node types:

Fully licensed commitment: includes VMware Engine nodes with VMware Cloud Foundations licenses for the capacity of the node and the VMware components. This should be the default agreement type you purchase, otherwise verify if you meet all requirements to purchase other agreement types. If you are an existing customer, this is similar to the commitments you have purchased previously.
Fully licensed convertible commitment: includes VMware Engine with VMware Cloud Foundations licenses for the capacity of the node and the VMware components. This offers the flexibility of CUD conversion. For more information about conversion of CUDs, contact your sales team.
Portable License commitment: includes only VMware Engine nodes. For This commitment type, you need to use your portable VMware Cloud Foundations license to pay for the capacity of node and VMware components.
Legacy License commitment: all commitments purchased prior to July 25, 2024 are considered legacy. These CUDs remain valid until their expiry dates.

CUD Analysis is not supported for the following Agreement types: Fully licensed, Fully licensed convertible, and Portable license commitments.

CUD analysis for upfront Legacy CUDs is not supported and recommendations provided should be ignored.

See VMware Engine pricing for examples of pricing that include CUDs.

The following table outlines the supported license commitments based on the contracts signed with Google Cloud.

Contract start time	Fully licensed commitments	Fully licensed convertible commitments	Portable license commitments	Legacy license commitments
Signed or renewed a contract before Dec 31, 2023	Allowed	Allowed	Allowed if contractually agreed	Allowed (not recommended) (See Legacy licence commitments)
Signed contracts between Jan 1, 2024 and May 31, 2024	Allowed	Allowed	Allowed if contractually agreed	Allowed (not recommended) (See Legacy licence commitments)
Signed or renewed a contract after June 1, 2024	Allowed	Allowed	Allowed if contractually agreed	No

Legacy licence commitments

For a legacy licence commitment contract signed or renewed before Dec 31, 2023, the following applies:

If you have received a discount on the on-demand SKUs in VMware Engine SKU groups, then you should buy Fully licensed commitments.
If you have received a discount on a CUD SKU, then we recommend amending the contract to discount the on-demand SKUs instead. If that's not possible, then we recommend buying Legacy license commitments.

For a legacy licence commitment contract signed or renewed between Jan 1, 2024 and May 31, 2024, the following applies:

All contracts received a combination of discounts on on-demand SKUs and CUD SKUs.
You can buy Fully licensed, Fully licensed convertible or Portable License commitment. Only in rare instances should you buy a Legacy license commitment.
You can use the discount received on the on-demand SKUs in the VMware Engine SKU groups as Enterprise discount % while purchasing a VMware Engine commitment. The discount you received on the CUD SKU is already factored in to offer the correct price and doesn't need to be used while purchasing the commitment. In this case, enter a custom discount % as 0.

How do CUDs apply to VMware Engine usage?

CUDs automatically apply to aggregate VMware Engine node usage in a region, giving you low, predictable costs, without the need to make any manual changes or updates yourself. This flexibility saves you time and helps you to save more by achieving high utilization rates across your commitments.

VMware Engine CUDs apply to all VMware Engine nodes for the region for which you have purchased commitments. VMware Engine CUDs don't apply to storage, backups, IP Addresses, network outbound data transfer, or licensing.

Purchasing VMware Engine commitments

To learn more about purchasing spend-based commitments, see the Google Cloud Committed use discounts page.

You can purchase CUDs from any Cloud Billing account, and the discount applies to any eligible usage in projects paid for by that Cloud Billing account. Any overage is charged at the on-demand rate. Before you purchase a commitment, read the Service specific terms regarding Committed Units.

When you purchase a VMware Engine CUD, you pay the same commitment fee for the entirety of the commitment term, even if the price of applicable usage changes. You still receive the same discount percentage on applicable usage in the event of a price change. The commitment fee is billed monthly or upfront, depending on the type of CUD.

Before you begin

Before you can purchase a CUD, make sure you have a correct Enterprise Discount Program (EDP), SKU group discounts, and CUD information.

Make sure that you have the following role or roles on the project: roles/owner, roles/billing.admin

Check for the roles

In the Google Cloud console, go to the IAM page.
Go to IAM
Select the project.
In the Principal column, find all rows that identify you or a group that you're included in. To learn which groups you're included in, contact your administrator.
For all rows that specify or include you, check the Role colunn to see whether the list of roles includes the required roles.

Grant the roles

In the Google Cloud console, go to the IAM page.
Go to IAM
Select the project.
Click Grant access.
In the New principals field, enter your user identifier. This is typically the email address for a Google Account.
In the Select a role list, select a role.
To grant additional roles, click Add another role and add each additional role.
Click Save.

Alternatively, you can make a purchase with a custom role with the following permissions:

enterprisepurchasing.gcveCuds.list
enterprisepurchasing.gcveNodePricingInfo.list
enterprisepurchasing.gcveCuds.create
billing.accounts.get
billing.subscriptions.create
vmwareengine.projectState.get
consumerprocurement.order.place
resourcemanager.projects.get

See VMware Engine IAM roles and permissions for more information.

Purchasing commitments for node types

You can purchase commitments for node types by using the Google Cloud console. After purchasing a CUD, monthly paid CUDs begin within an hour of purchasing, while upfront paid CUDs begin at 12 AM Pacific.

CUDs are automatically applied to eligible usage in the region you specified. If there is no eligible usage in that region, you can add VMware Engine nodes to count towards your commitment by requesting node quota.

To purchase a VMware Engine spend-based commitment in your project, do the following:

In the Google Cloud console, go to the Committed use discounts page.

Go to Committed use discounts
Click Purchase.
In the Name field, provide a name that helps you identify the commitment that you're purchasing.
Select the region where you want to spend towards your commitment.
Choose a subscription type for your commitment.
Choose an Agreement Type.
Choose a commitment duration of 1 or 3 years.
Select a node type and node count for your commitment.
Enter a custom or enterprise discount percentage, if applicable. For Agreement Types Fully licensed, Fully licensed convertible commitments and Portable License commitments, custom discount is generally 0%. For more info see Questions and challenges section.
Review the information you provided and click Purchase to purchase the commitment.

Prices are estimated so there might be a difference in the final price.

For information about how to view the audit logs, see Committed use discounts audit logging.

Questions and challenges

Consider the following questions and answers in addition to some challenges you might face and how to address them:

Where do I find discount information?

You can find discount information by doing the following:

Check the contracts signed with Google Cloud.
Talk to your Google account representative.
Check the pricing table found in your billing account and search for VMware Engine SKUs by filtering for the "VMware Engine" service description. The discount column displays your discount percentage.
Check for the Discount column VMware Engine pay-as-you-go SKUs. For example, look for "Standard 72 VCPU Node (REGION_NAME)" for ve1 nodes.

What kind of discount information do I need to know before purchasing CUDs?

Customers receive different kinds of discounts based on the contracts they signed with Google Cloud. For VMware Engine, the most common discount is SKU group discount followed by EDP. Custom discount was used with legacy CUDs. You can find your discounts on pricing page.

Custom discount

Custom discounts are less common discount structures applied to a specific SKU. For fully licensed, fully licensed convertible, and Portable License commitments, the custom discount is generally 0%. This applies to the legacy CUDs only when offered as part of the contract. Additionally, the following applies to custom discounts:

Specific regions and CUD types may offer a deeper discount. For example, you might be offered a deeper CUD discount for a 3-year prepaid CUD in us-east4 only. To use this discount, you should purchase only that particular CUD in that region. If you purchase any other CUD in a different region, the extra discount won't be applied.
You should refer to your contract or talk to your Google representative before proceeding with any CUD purchase with a custom discount.
Contracted discounts are available in the pricing page under chosen billing account. The discount is displayed in the Discount column. Check for VMware Engine SKUs that have Commitment in the SKU description.
Custom discounts on legacy agreements may be more expensive than the current fully licensed agreement price. Check pricing and discount levels before making a purchase.

When purchasing nodes with custom CUD discounts, the following applies:

You must input the contracted discount percentage.
You can't receive a higher discount than contracted by entering a higher custom discount.
The underlying system always applies the negotiated discount as per the signed contract.
Entering incorrect custom discounts affects the summary values generated at the time of purchase and won't match the final invoice.

SKU group discount

Consider the following information about SKU group discounts:

A SKU group discount is the most common discount used by VMware Engine customers. This discount is offered as part of a large Google Cloud commit.
Contracted discounts are available in the pricing page under chosen billing account. You can see the discount under the column "Discount".
Check for VMware Engine pay-as-you-go SKUs. For example, look for "Standard 72 VCPU Node (region-name)" for ve1 nodes or "VMware Engine Gen 2" for ve2. SKUs that have "Commitment" and "dollar based" are not applicable.
You can also refer to your contract or talk to your Google representative to verify.
For example, customers with 10% SKU group discount on VMware Engine pay-as-you-go SKUs will receive this discount on VMware Engine consumption during the contract period.

If you enter an incorrect SKU group discount while purchasing a CUD, it will impact the invoice. The following may also result:

You might be charged for overage. For example, if the actual SKU group discount is 0% but you enter 10%, you might receive an overage charge every month in addition to the CUD charges.
If you enter an SKU group discount that's less than the actual discount, then you might commit to spending more than what's required.

Custom and enterprise discount

This type of combined discount is rare, and considerations from both types previously listed apply.

Question or challenge	How it can be addressed
What happens if the wrong CUD is purchased?	Reach out to your Google representative as soon as possible to facilitate a resolution.
I am a resold customer and my partner does not have access to my projects. This is stopping the partner from buying commitments.	Create a new project under the same billing account and give access to that project to the partner to access the purchase page. This project is just used for purchasing commitments only.

CUD Visibility

How can I list all CUDs associate with my Billing Account?

Running the following command from the Cloud Shell will return all CUDs associated with Billing Account of the current project:

curl -H "Authorization: Bearer $(gcloud auth print-access-token)" -H "Content-Type: application/json" https://enterprisepurchasing.googleapis.com/v1alpha/projects/$GOOGLE_CLOUD_PROJECT/locations/global/gcveCuds

What's next

Analyze the effectiveness of your spend-based committed use discounts This is not supported for CUD analysis for upfront CUDs.