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FinOps, Metering & Billing

Okustera provides real-time infrastructure telemetry, transparent unit pricing, and automated billing orchestration to give engineering teams full visibility and control over cloud spend.

The FinOps engine continuously meters resource utilization across Compute, Storage, Managed Databases, Network Egress, Artifact Storage, and Serverless Invocations.

Architecture & Rating Engine​

Key FinOps Capabilities​

  • Real-Time Metering: Near real-time calculation of Month-to-Date (MTD) spend and projected end-of-month forecast based on running instance profiles.
  • Per-Service Cost Breakdown: Itemized visibility into spend share across compute, persistent block volumes, S3 buckets, relational databases, caches, networking, and AI inference.
  • AI Model Token Metering: High-precision streaming extraction of prompt and completion token counts from the AI Gateway, billing at predictable per-million rates.
  • Budget Caps & Threshold Alerts: Set monthly budget caps with customizable alert thresholds (e.g., 50%, 80%, 100%) and automatic quota freezes to prevent runaway spend.
  • Stripe Payment Gateway: Secure credit card tokenization, dynamic payment method management, and instant online Stripe checkout sessions.
  • Automated Invoicing: Detailed itemized invoice records with downloadable receipt statements.

Transparent Cloud Pricing Rates​

Okustera operates on a predictable, pay-as-you-go consumption model with no hidden egress penalties:

Resource CategoryMetricRate (USD)Description
Compute vCPUvCPU-hour$0.024 / hrDedicated KVM virtual CPU core
Compute MemoryGB-hour$0.004 / hrHigh-speed DDR5 ECC RAM
Ceph NVMe Block StorageGB-month$0.08 / moHigh-IOPS replicated persistent volumes
Ceph S3 Object StorageGB-month$0.015 / moDistributed S3-compatible multi-attach storage
PostgreSQL DBaaSInstance-hour$0.045 / hrCloudNativePG high-availability replica
Valkey Sentinel DBaaSInstance-hour$0.030 / hrIn-memory cache replica with Sentinel quorum
Network EgressGB transferred$0.010 / GBInter-region and public egress
Serverless Invocations100K calls$0.020gVisor sandboxed serverless execution
AI Prompt Tokens1M tokens$0.20 / 1MInput tokens processed across Model Foundry models
AI Completion Tokens1M tokens$0.60 / 1MOutput tokens streamed from vLLM inference engines
Fractional GPU AcceleratorSlice-hour$0.85 / hrNVIDIA GPU slice (MIG / time-sliced accelerator)

Managing Billing in the Cloud Portal​

The Okustera Cloud Portal (/billing) provides complete transparency over cloud spending:

1. Payment Methods & Stripe Integration​

  1. Navigate to Billing $\to$ Payment Methods.
  2. Click Add Payment Method to securely enter credit card details tokenized directly by Stripe (zero card data stored on Okustera servers).
  3. Set your preferred card as the default payment source for automated end-of-month invoicing.
  4. For prepaid credits, click Top Up Balance to launch an instant Stripe Checkout session.

2. Setting Monthly Budgets & Alert Thresholds​

Prevent unexpected runaway bills from auto-scaling or batch jobs:

  1. In the Billing Console, navigate to Budgets.
  2. Set a Monthly Budget Limit (e.g., $500.00).
  3. Configure notification triggers:
    • Warning Thresholds: Alert team via email or webhook when spend hits 50%, 80%, or 90% of budget.
    • Automated Action: Optionally enforce a soft quota freeze when reaching 100% to prevent provisioning of new instances while keeping running production workloads alive.

3. Invoices & Usage Breakdown​

  • View itemized Month-to-Date (MTD) spend and projected forecast.
  • Filter consumption across Compute, Storage, Databases, Network Egress, and AI Tokens.
  • Download PDF receipts and tax invoices for accounting compliance.

REST API Reference​

Programmatic billing access is available via the Okustera API:

  • GET /api/v1/billing/overview — Month-to-date spend, forecast, and active budget status.
  • GET /api/v1/billing/stats — High-level telemetry summary and usage metrics.
  • GET /api/v1/billing/breakdown — Itemized cost breakdown by service category.
  • GET /api/v1/billing/invoices — Historical billing statements and line items.
  • GET /api/v1/billing/invoices/{id} — Retrieve detailed invoice breakdown.
  • GET /api/v1/billing/payment-methods — List configured customer payment cards.
  • POST /api/v1/billing/payment-methods — Add and tokenize a new payment method.
  • POST /api/v1/billing/payment-methods/{id}/default — Set card as default payment method.
  • DELETE /api/v1/billing/payment-methods/{id} — Remove a saved payment method.
  • POST /api/v1/billing/checkout-session — Generate a secure Stripe payment checkout session.
  • GET /api/v1/billing/budget — Retrieve current budget limits and alert thresholds.
  • PUT /api/v1/billing/budget — Update monthly budget limit and notification thresholds.
  • GET /api/v1/billing/pricing — Retrieve active rate card and unit prices.