Bandwidth quotas and add-ons

Where in the admin: Services › Bandwidth: Summary (/bandwidth), Add-on (/bandwidth/addons) and Quotas, pricing & policy (/bandwidth/policy). The module switch is in System › Admin › License & updates.

What it does

Bandwidth gives every metered service a monthly traffic quota. NexCMP measures usage, warns the customer at 80% and 100%, and, when the quota is exceeded, acts according to your overage policy. Customers can buy add-ons of extra terabytes from their wallet; you can also grant add-ons for free.

Service	Quota
Virtual Machines	Per VM per month (default 2048 GB, that is 2 TB)
Kubernetes	The VM quota multiplied by the number of workers
Object Storage	Download traffic per customer per month (default 100 GB); beyond it the normal pay-as-you-go price applies
VPN	Keeps the quota of its plan; upgrade bandwidth on the VPN page
Private Cloud	Unmetered

Requirements

Item	Requirement
Module	Bandwidth is on by default. Turn it off under License & updates to hide it.
Measurement source	With the default source, CloudStack VM statistics. Keep VM statistics collection enabled in CloudStack; the default retention of 720 minutes is enough.
Proxmox VE	VMs on Proxmox VE are not metered.
Exchange rate	The add-on price is entered in VND. See Currency and exchange rates.
Depends on	CloudStack for VM and Kubernetes traffic, S3 for storage downloads.

Prepare the infrastructure

Not required beyond CloudStack being connected. NexCMP reads listVirtualMachinesUsageHistory for all VMs of the account in one call, every 5 minutes, in windows of at most two hours. Each sample covers one minute and is added up. Samples are taken three minutes in the past so they have time to arrive. A gap longer than CloudStack's retention (about 12 hours) is skipped and recorded.

What the numbers mean

Usage is counted on each VM's network interface, so it includes traffic between VMs, not only traffic to the Internet. It can be a little higher than an edge router would count.

Connect in NexCMP

1. Open Services › Bandwidth › Quotas, pricing & policy.

2. Set the values and click Save; a reason is asked and recorded. The worker applies the change within about 30 seconds.

   Field	Default	Meaning
   Enable Bandwidth (customer menu and buying add-ons)	on	The switch for the module's sales side.
   VM, GB/month (Kubernetes = this value × workers)	2048	Quota per VM per period.
   S3, GB download/month per customer	100	Beyond it normal S3 pay-as-you-go applies.
   Quota direction (VM, Kubernetes)	In + out	Or Outbound only.
   +1 TB price (VND)	100,000	Converted to cents at the quote rate.
   Max per purchase (TB)	50
   Overage policy	suspend	notify, throttle or suspend (below).
   Enforce actual suspend from	migration date + 24 hours	Before this date nothing is suspended; customers are only warned.
   Throttle rate limit (Mbps)		Only used by throttle.

   

Overage policies

Policy	What happens when a service passes 100%
notify	The customer is notified. Nothing else.
throttle	Like notify for now: the speed limiter is not connected in this release.
suspend (default)	The VM, cluster or S3 account is suspended until the customer buys an add-on or the next period starts. Only effective from the suspend-from date.

The 80% and 100% alerts (bell and e-mail) always run, once per threshold, period and service. If you unlock a service that was suspended for bandwidth while it is still over quota, the next check (within 5 minutes) suspends it again. To keep it running, grant an add-on.

Watch usage and grant add-ons

Open Services › Bandwidth › Summary. It lists every service with its usage in the current period, quota including add-ons, remaining quota, and the 80% and 100% marks. KPI tiles show the number of services, add-ons sold in the last 30 days and the collector state (running, cursor). The Daily table shows the current period day by day.

To give a customer room, use Grant on a service (an add-on of whole terabytes at no charge). Open Add-on for the history of purchases and grants, newest first, with a type filter.

What customers see

The customer portal gets a Bandwidth menu with usage, remaining quota and a buy +1 TB action paid from the wallet (up to your per-purchase maximum). Add-ons are valid for the current period.

Verify

1. The collector on Summary is running and its cursor moves forward every few minutes.
2. A VM with traffic shows usage after about 10 to 15 minutes.
3. To see the alerts, lower the VM quota to a few GB on a test installation and generate some traffic. Do not do this on production: the quota applies to every VM.

Limits and notes

• Usage counts per period (a month). Add-ons and quotas apply to the current period.
• "Enforce actual suspend from" protects you from suspending customers the moment the module is first enabled.
• The throttle policy only notifies in this release.
• Changing the quota applies to every site, including reseller sites. Resellers' retail and wholesale add-on prices follow their discount or markup.
• Bandwidth for Dedicated servers is a separate matter; see Dedicated servers.

Troubleshooting

Symptom	Cause	Fix
Usage stays at zero for a running VM	The worker is stopped, CloudStack is disconnected, or VM statistics are disabled	Check sudo nexcmp status and Test connection in CloudStack; enable CloudStack VM statistics.
Usage has holes	CloudStack retention was exceeded, or the worker was down for more than about 12 hours	Not recoverable; the gap is recorded.
Usage is a little higher than expected	Traffic between VMs and other interface traffic is included	Expected; explain this to customers.
A suspended service comes back suspended after you unlock it	It is still over quota	Grant an add-on or raise the quota.
Nothing is suspended although the policy is suspend	The suspend-from date is in the future	Set it to now (the page shows "ACTIVE" when in effect).
"bw_over_policy must be notify, throttle or suspend"	Invalid policy sent through the API	Use one of the three values.
Proxmox VMs show no usage	They are not metered	Expected.
Customers cannot buy add-ons	Bandwidth is switched off, or the wallet is empty	Check the switch and the wallet.