This topic describes how to select and optimize Alibaba Cloud storage services to help you meet your data storage requirements and save storage costs.

In general, enterprises and organizations regard data storage as an auxiliary service. Therefore, they do not optimize their storage or clear the storage that is not used after their data is uploaded to the cloud, which results in the huge cost of storage services. According to a blog post by RightScale, about 7% of the cost for cloud services is wasted on storage volumes that are not used and old snapshots that are copies of storage volumes.

Alibaba Cloud provides various flexible data storage solutions for different storage resources, including blocks, files, and objects. These solutions allow you to convert the storage type of your data at any time. This topic describes how to select the Alibaba Cloud storage services that can best meet your data storage requirements with the lowest cost. This topic also describes how to optimize the storage services that you select to achieve a balance among performance, availability, and durability.