Manage egress in your subscription

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Egress is the fee that a cloud provider charges when you move data out of their cloud. When you download data directly from your cloud storage, your storage provider bills you for egress directly. When you use Aspera on Cloud to download from cloud storage, the cloud provider charges IBM Aspera for egress; IBM Aspera then passes these egress charges on to your subscription.

Which transfers accrue egress?

Your pre-paid subscription accumulates egress charges when you use AoC to transfer data out of any cloud storage. Your subscription does not accumulate egress when you don't use AoC to transfer data from cloud storage, nor when you use AoC to transfer data from an on-premises, non-cloud storage.

Note that IBM Aspera does not bill Pay-as-You-Go subscriptions for egress as a separate line item; egress fees are included in transfer volume fees.

From cloud storage, download using AoC

When you use AoC to download, the cloud provider charges IBM Aspera for egress; Aspera passes those charges on to you.

From your data center, download using AoC:

If the data you download is not in the cloud, no egress charges occur.

From cloud storage, download directly without AoC

If you download using some other tool rather than using AoC, your cloud provider charges you directly for egress; no egress accrues to your subscription.

From cloud storage, transfer to another cloud or region using AoC

Using AoC to transfer data from one cloud to another results in egress charges to IBM Aspera; IBM Aspera passes those charges to your subscription.

From a data center, transfer to cloud storage using AoC

This transfer does not cause egress charges since the data is not moving out of any cloud storage.

Send files from one person to another

This operation combines an upload and a download of a 10 GB file. Since the transfer used the cloud, egress of 10 GB accrues to your subscription.

What causes egress overages?

Your subscription includes a pre-paid egress volume. You have the entire term of your subscription to use that egress volume. Once you exceed the pre-paid volume, your subscription incurs overage charges for further egress; you move into a pay-per-use status for egress.

You remain in pay-per-use status and continue to be billed overage fees for additional egress until either you increase your pre-paid volume in negotiation with IBM, or the term expires and your egress accumulation begins again.

AoC does not limit your ability to move your data from cloud storage even if you exceed your pre-paid egress volume.

If you subscribed to a Pay-as-You-Go (Pay/Go) plan, the term of your subscription is one month and there is no pre-paid maximum allowance for egress.

Example

In the screenshot below, your egress volume exceeds your pre-paid max in April. The excess egress is show in red in April. IBM Aspera bills you for the excess egress at pay-per-use-rates.

In May, April's excess egress, already billed to you, shows as part of the overall cumulative egress you've used so far. The egress you use in May continues to be billed at pay-per-use rates, since you continue to be in excess of your pre-paid max.

Detail of the egress graph, showing an annotated screenshot pointing out that usage in excess of the pre-paid max is represented in red as pay-per-use volume, and that the pay-per-use volume in any given month shows as simple accumulated volume in the next month. Accumulated volume is shown in blue.

Interpret the graph and table

Egress usage accumulates over the term of your subscription. Your subscription includes a pre-paid, in-plan egress volume.

Graph

Consider a sample graph for egress.

Graph for egress with annotations pre-paid egress and actual cumulative egress.

It's easy to see your current egress usage compared to your pre-paid egress allowance.
  • The height of the last bar to the right, which is the current month, is the actual cumulative egress to date.
  • The heavy horizontal line shows pre-committed maximum or pre-paid allowance for egress.

Table

If your subscription includes multiple entitlements, you can filter the table view. When you filter by month, the table shows a different view of the same data shown in the graph. If you filter by entitlement, you see usage depicted by entitlement.

Below each graph is a tabular representation of the same data. Each month shows egress used, the total for the month, and the total cumulative egress used per date. Monthly usage is broken down into your in-plan volume and pay-per-use volume. As long as your cumulative egress remains below your in-plan max, you incur no pay-per-use fees. Once you exceed your in-plan max, all subsequent egress is pay-per use.

As an example, suppose egress exceeds the in-plan allowance during the month of April. Consider these columns in the April row. The right column shows that the total egress used in the month was 93.072.9 GB. This total monthly egress is split between 19,096.7 GB (left column) as the last of the pre-committed, in-plan egress, plus 73,976.2 GB (center column) additional egress that month, to be billed as pay-per-use.

Now consider the last two columns for two adjacent months. The value in the last column ("Total egress used to date") for October, plus the value in the second-to-the-last column ("Total monthly egress") for November, equals the value in the last column for November. In other words, the Month1 cumulative egress plus Month2 monthly egress equals Month2 cumulative egress.