Alibaba Cloud File Storage NAS (NAS) is a file storage service for compute nodes, such as Alibaba Cloud Elastic Compute Service (ECS) instances, E-HPC, and container services. NAS is a distributed file system that provides shared access, elastic scaling, high reliability, and high performance. It supports the Network File System (NFS) and Server Message Block (SMB) protocols.
File Storage NAS currently offers four types: Extreme, Performance, Premium, and General-purpose capacity.
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Specifications |
Description |
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Extreme |
A high-performance shared file storage built on Alibaba Cloud's latest network architecture and all-flash storage. It provides a maximum capacity of 256 TiB and a starting bandwidth of 150 MB/s, which can be expanded to 1200 MB/s. It delivers stable latency in the hundreds of microseconds. This type is ideal for workloads that involve massive numbers of small files and are sensitive to latency. |
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General-purpose |
Uses solid-state drives (SSDs) as the storage medium to deliver high throughput, high input/output operations per second (IOPS), and low latency for application workloads. It is suitable for file sharing services that require high concurrency, high throughput, elastic scaling, and low read latency. This type offers performance advantages for workloads with frequent read/write operations and high system response requirements. |
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Premium |
Uses SSDs as the storage medium to provide high throughput, IOPS, and low latency for application workloads. It is suitable for file sharing services that require high concurrency, high throughput, elastic scaling, and low read latency. This type offers performance advantages for workloads with frequent read/write operations and high system response requirements, but at a lower storage cost than the Performance type. |
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General-purpose capacity |
Uses SATA hard disk drives (HDDs) as the storage medium to provide high-performance storage at a lower cost. It is suitable for cost-sensitive file sharing services that require high concurrency, high throughput, and elastic scaling. This type offers a cost advantage for workloads with infrequent read/write access and less demanding latency requirements. |
Scenarios
NAS is suitable for the following scenarios:
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Container storage
Containers are ideal for building microservices because they can be provisioned quickly, are portable, and provide process isolation. Containers that need to access the original data each time they start require a shared file system. This system allows them to connect to the data regardless of the instance on which they are running. NAS provides persistent and shared access to file data, which makes it an excellent choice for container storage.
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Content management and web services
NAS can serve as a durable, high-throughput file system for various content management systems (CMS) and web service applications. It stores and serves information for a wide range of applications, such as websites, online publishing, and archives. NAS follows standard file system semantics, file naming conventions, and permissions familiar to web developers. This makes it easy to integrate with web applications.
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Enterprise applications
NAS is highly scalable, elastic, available, and durable. These qualities make it an excellent file storage solution for enterprise applications and applications delivered as a service. The standard file system interface and semantics that NAS provides make it easy to migrate enterprise applications to Alibaba Cloud or build new ones.
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Media and entertainment workflows
Media workflows such as video editing, production, broadcast processing, sound design, and rendering often rely on shared storage to manage large files. A strong data consistency model, high throughput, and shared file access can reduce the time needed to complete these workflows. It also lets you merge multiple local file stores into a single location for all users.
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Big data analytics
NAS provides the scale and performance that big data applications require. It delivers high throughput to compute nodes, read and write consistency, and low-latency file operations. Many analytics workloads interact with data through a file interface. These workloads rely on file semantics, such as file locking, and require the ability to write to parts of a file. NAS supports these file system semantics and can elastically scale both capacity and performance.
Performance
The maximum throughput of a single file system is directly related to the amount of capacity in use. As storage usage increases, the maximum throughput also increases. NAS supports concurrent access and random read/write operations from thousands of ECS instances through POSIX-based APIs.
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Specifications |
Capacity |
Latency (average for reading a 4 KiB data block) |
IOPS |
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Extreme NAS |
256 TiB |
Hundreds of microseconds |
10,000 to 200,000 |
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Performance NAS |
1 PiB |
Milliseconds |
Up to 30,000 for 4 KB random read/write I/O |
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Premium NAS |
1 PiB |
Milliseconds |
Up to 30,000 for 4 KB random read/write I/O |
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General-purpose capacity NAS |
10 PiB |
Tens of milliseconds |
Up to 15,000 for 4 KB random read/write I/O |
Interfaces
The APIs for the NAS data layer, which handle data read and write operations, are implemented through POSIX-based APIs. You can move your on-premises applications to the cloud without changing their code. This provides flexibility and convenience.
The APIs for the NAS control layer support the HTTP and HTTPS protocols and allow GET and POST methods. You can use the APIs to manage File Storage NAS if you are familiar with web service protocols and at least one programming language. You can use the Alibaba Cloud NAS software development kit (SDK), Cloud Assistant CLI, or Alibaba Cloud API Explorer to call the NAS control layer APIs. These APIs allow you to create, delete, query, and modify resources such as file systems, mount targets, permission groups, snapshots, and tags. For more information, see API Overview. If you prefer a graphical web application, you can use the NAS console to perform all control layer operations that the NAS APIs support.
Scalability and elasticity
Traditional storage systems require time-consuming and complex planning, purchasing, partitioning, and monitoring. NAS eliminates the need for these operations. NAS automatically scales up or down as you add or delete files. This provides on-demand storage allocation without disrupting your applications.
Data durability and service availability
NAS stores multiple replicas of your data on the backend. Each piece of data is copied to multiple devices across different, isolated fault domains. This design provides 99.999999999% (eleven 9s) of data reliability and significantly reduces security risks.
Security
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Permission groups
In NAS, a permission group acts as a whitelist. It defines access permissions for file storage, including authorized IP addresses, read/write permissions, and user permissions. You can add rules to a permission group to allow specified IP addresses or CIDR blocks to access a file system. You can also grant different levels of access to different IP addresses or CIDR blocks. For more information, see Manage permission groups.
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Resource Access Management (RAM)
You can use Resource Access Management (RAM) to manage user identities and control access to NAS resources. RAM is a user-based access control service. You can create and manage multiple RAM users under a single Alibaba Cloud account. You can assign different authorization policies to these users to grant them different permissions to access cloud resources. RAM also helps you avoid sharing your Alibaba Cloud account AccessKey with other users. You can assign the least privilege required to reduce your enterprise's security risks. For more information, see Use RAM policies to control access to NAS.
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Access control lists (ACLs)
You can use access control lists (ACLs) to manage access permissions for files and directories. ACLs provide resource-based access control. When enterprise users share files among multiple users and groups on a shared file system, permission control is essential. ACLs allow you to set specific permissions for different users and groups on different directories or files to achieve access isolation. For more information, see NAS NFS ACLs and NAS SMB ACLs.
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Encryption
NAS uses the industry-standard AES-256 algorithm for data encryption at rest. It encrypts data stored on your file system and uses Key Management Service (KMS) to manage the encryption keys. Data is automatically encrypted before it is written to the file system. The data is automatically decrypted when it is read by an application. NAS handles these processes transparently, so you do not need to modify your applications. For more information, see Server-side encryption.
Billing model
NAS capacity is automatically configured based on your needs. You do not need to partition storage in advance. NAS uses a pay-as-you-go billing model. You pay only for the storage space that you use. When you add files, your cost increases. When you delete files, billing for that space stops. You can also choose a subscription billing method. With a subscription, you purchase a resource plan in advance. Your usage is then deducted from the plan's quota. Resource plans are typically more cost-effective.