Flatcar Linux Azure billing / licensing confusion

[dghubble]

Raising some concerns about the Flatcar Linux Azure Marketplace image.

On Azure, CoreOS Container Linux has always been offered as a free image. It has no license accept step and no additional cost.

The Flatcar Linux offering is listed as BYOL ("bring your own license") and does not list additional charges (but also doesn't say free). The BYOL link doesn't go anywhere and Flatcar's Azure docs don't provide details about license acceptance or charges / pricing.

License

The slightly different Flatcar Linux offering requires users accept Kinvolks terms to use the Marketplace image.

$ terraform apply
Error message: 'Legal terms have not been accepted for this item on this subscription

Remedied by the following (suggested in Typhoon docs).

az vm image terms show --publish kinvolk --offer flatcar-container-linux --plan stable
az vm image terms accept --publish kinvolk --offer flatcar-container-linux --plan stable

My best attempts at investigating show you can use the az CLI to get a JSON blob that links to a personalized license that just contains a link to https://kinvolk.io/legal/open-source/.

Cost

Accepting the Marketplace terms enables a subscription (its shown deeply burried in the Azure Marketplace console if you click on juuust the right things) which may have costs associated with it. Since trialing of Flatcar Linux Azure began, a new separate Azure Marketplace invoice line item (separate from Azure Service) has appeared.

Azure's own detailed invoice is broken and the generic invoice PDF provides no details about even the name of the subscription, so its been difficult to confirm whether this is indeed coming from Flatcar Linux Azure. Its possible its something else.

Actions

There are several problems with this situation:

• Is Flatcar Linux Azure Marketplace image cost free or not? This should be clear.
• What really is the Flatcar Linux BYOL policy? Is this step needed vs CoreOS?
• Azure's Dashboard's UX is becoming more of a liability

I've reached out to Kinvolk directly to gather some details.

[chrskhl]

Thanks @dghubble. We're looking into this.

[dghubble]

I filed a support ticket with Azure on April 17 to look into the charge I saw on my side, since their invoices haven't provided details.

[chrskhl]

We have a usage-based offering set at $0/hr coming in the next days that should resolve this from our side. I'll post here when that's available.
We'll then deprecate the BYOB offering and remove it some point in the future.

[dghubble]

@blixtra sound good 👍

Azure support replied to say they're looking into the unattributed invoice I received. Could be some fees on their end. Alternately, I'll know in 9 days if cancelling the offering removed the charge for the new billing cycle.

[chrskhl]

It's live now. You can find the "free" offer here: https://azuremarketplace.microsoft.com/en-us/marketplace/apps/kinvolk.flatcar-container-linux-free
Hope that works for ya.

[dghubble]

Alright, I tried out the new free offering and added it in #729. Updated the docs for the az command needed to accept the terms that are the same (pointing to https://kinvolk.io/legal/open-source/). I think its more clear now this is $0.

In that time, no new charges have appeared so that checks out. The original charges issue I had is still being investigated by Azure, but its sounding more like a bug on their side that somehow began when I tried the byol subscription and may be no fault of Kinvolks.