AppFog 新用戶要收費了

上個月就收到 AppFog 來信告知, 要縮減免費使用者的可用資源, 但沒仔細看, 結果 2/20 後我放在 AppFog 的機器人就沒有定時回報股市資訊運算結果, 但實在太多事要忙, 沒空去檢查原因, 今日趁下載學姊的龐大語音檔時, 找出那封信, 哇, 仔細看才發現, 還好今天有看, 不然到 3/19 以後, 所有未登入的免費使用者帳號都會被砍掉.

摘要 :

1. 不再開放免費使用. 已註冊之免費使用者將縮減資源為 512MB RAM, 2 Apps, 2 services
2. 所有免費使用者的應用程式與服務都會在 2/20 被停掉, 使用者須在 3/5 前登入並將程式與服務重新啟動, 否則帳號會被暫停. 若 3/19 前仍未登入, 帳號將被刪除.
3. 若提升為付費會員 (最低消費每月 $20 美元), 程式與服務會自動重新啟動.

總之, 有交錢好辦事啦. 不過, 說句公道話, AppFog 是我用過除了 Google App Engine 以外最穩定的雲端主機, 可惜我當初只註冊了兩個帳號.

來函全文如下 :

THIS EMAIL CONTAINS IMPORTANT INFORMATION THAT REQUIRES YOUR IMMEDIATE ATTENTION AND ACTION

Next Wednesday, February 19, we are reducing the size of our free account plans. As a free account owner, this will impact you.

Our overriding goal is to provide a stable, reliable, and incredibly easy-to-use PaaS for all of our customers. Over the past few months, a subset of free users have engaged in abusive actions that has negatively affected the stability and uptime for all users.

We have taken numerous steps and dedicated resources toward addressing abuse, but have come to the realization that larger changes are needed to bring AppFog back to the level of reliability our customers have every right to expect. We want all developers to have an opportunity to try our service. We also need to maintain a level of control over the reliability experienced by our paying customers.

This is going to result in several changes to AppFog’s systems and plans. Our goal is to make these changes as minimal as possible while still improving the experience for everyone. To reach these goals, we are making the following changes:

• New customers will no longer have the option to sign up for a free plan. We will offer a trial starting very soon.
• Existing users of our free plan will see a modified free plan, with a smaller set of resources available for your use.
  • 512MB RAM (previously 2GB RAM)
  • 2 app instances (previously limited by available memory)
  • 2 services instances (previously 8 services instances)

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ACTION REQUIRED

A rolling 4-hour maintenance window will begin at 6pm US Pacific Time (UTC-08:00) on Wednesday, February 19. All applications will be stopped and unavailable during the maintenance window. You should notify your users of this maintenance period when applications will be down.  

Each infrastructure will come down to begin a 4-hour maintenance period at the following US Pacific times (with each datacenter’s local time in parentheses):

• AWS-AP - 1pm Wed, Feb 19 US Pacific  (5am Thurs, Feb 20 SGT/GMT+8)
• AWS-EU - 3pm Wed, Feb 19 US Pacific  (11pm Wed, Feb 19 GMT)
• AWS-US - 6pm Wed, Feb 19 US Pacific  (9pm Wed, Feb 19 US ET/GMT-5)
• HP-US - 10pm Wed, Feb 19 US Pacific  (11pm Wed, Feb 19 US MT/GMT-7)

ALL FREE PLAN CUSTOMERS WILL NEED TO RESTART THEIR APPLICATIONS

You will need to login to your AppFog account and restart your applications after the maintenance is complete.  We will post regular maintenance updates to the Twitter account @appfogstatus and on the http://status.appfog.com page.

IMPORTANT: WE WILL ALSO BE REMOVING INACTIVE ACCOUNTS

You must login within 14 days (by Wed. March 5). After this date, inactive accounts not logged into will suspended and the account owner notified. Suspended accounts with no activity (login) after 30 days (by Fri. Mar 19) will be deleted.

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As a Free Account Owner affected by these changes, you have two options:

1. Upgrade to a paid account before the restart. Running apps in paid accounts will be automatically restarted.
2. Continue with your free plan account; all apps in free plans will remain stopped until you restart them. Restart as many as you want, as long as you stay below the new thresholds outlined above (512MB, 2 app instances, 2 service instances).  If you have been consuming more than these resource limits, we hope you will consider upgrading to one of our subscription plans.

Thank you for being an AppFog user and customer. We appreciate our developers and know that this maintenance could be disruptive for many of our users. These changes are critical and intended to enable us to focus our resources on the goal of stability and uptime for all of our customers moving forward.

Sincerely,
The AppFog Team