Cloud Data Transfer (CDT) is used to bill data transfers for different Alibaba Cloud services in a centralized manner. CDT allows you to flexibly use and conveniently manage data transfer resources. This helps you effectively reduce IT costs.
You can use CDT to bill Internet data transfers for Alibaba Cloud services that provide access to the Internet per month in each region based on tiered pricing. The larger the amount of Internet data transfers, the lower the unit price.
You can use CDT to bill cross-region data transfers for Alibaba Cloud services that provide cross-region access based on the pay-by-data-transfer metering method. You can use cross-region data transfers based on your business requirements by using this metering method.
Scenarios
Reduced data transfer costs
If your business is in the early stage of development and the Internet access volume is small, you can use CDT to reduce your data transfer costs. CDT provides you with long-term data transfer benefits. You can use 200 GB (20 GB of which can be used in regions in the Chinese mainland) of free Internet data transfers over BGP lines each month in CDT. This means that no data transfer costs are incurred for the first 200 GB of Internet data transfers that you use each month, allowing you to easily deploy services on Alibaba Cloud in the initial stage. For more information, see Details of free quota.
For example, Developer A uses Alibaba Cloud services to build a personal website and consumes less than 200 GB of monthly data transfers. Before you activate CDT, Developer A needs to pay for the data transfers of the Alibaba Cloud services. After you activate CDT, Developer A no longer needs to pay for the first 200 GB (20 GB of which can be used in regions in the Chinese mainland) of Internet data transfers each month.
If your company expects to reduce IT costs, tiered pricing for Internet data transfers provided by CDT has obvious advantages. CDT can bill Internet data transfers for Alibaba Cloud services that provide access to the Internet in each region based on tiered pricing. The services include Elastic IP Address (EIP) and Internet Shared Bandwidth. The larger the amount of Internet data transfers, the lower the unit price. For more information, see Pricing of Internet data transfers.
For example, a financial customer whose business is deployed in the China (Beijing) and China (Shanghai) regions uses EIP and Classic Load Balancer (CLB). If CDT is not activated, EIP and CLB charge you data transfers separately. After you activate CDT, the customer has 20 GB of free Internet data transfers each month which can be used in regions in the Chinese mainland. In addition, CDT aggregates the Internet data transfers generated by EIP and CLB and performs tiered pricing by region. This means that the customer can enjoy the lower unit prices of data transfers, effectively reducing data transfer costs.
Unified statistics and billing on the data transfers of Alibaba Cloud services
Before you activate CDT, the usage and bills for the data transfers of Alibaba Cloud services are scattered across different Alibaba Cloud services. You need to manually aggregate the usage and bill data of multiple Alibaba Cloud services to gain a more comprehensive understanding of data transfer usage. CDT allows you to aggregate the Internet data transfers and cross-region data transfers of different Alibaba Cloud services. This helps you analyze data transfer usage more efficiently. CDT also supports splitting bill based on tags. You can use tags to split bills by service or department to better control data transfer costs. For more information, see Use CDT to split bills by tag.
For example, an advertising customer reviews IT costs every month to better control costs. Before you activate CDT, the advertising customer usually needs to export and collect statistics about multiple bills to fully understand the business situation. After you activate CDT, the advertising customer can clearly understand the usage of Internet data transfers with only one bill.
Support for the pay-by-data-transfer metering method for Alibaba Cloud services that provide cross-region access
Before you activate CDT, Alibaba Cloud services that provide cross-region access such as Cloud Enterprise Network (CEN) and Global Accelerator (GA) support only the pay-by-bandwidth metering method. This means that you need to plan bandwidth usage in advance. Business peaks and resource redundancy must be considered during the planning of bandwidth usage. Therefore, the actual bandwidth usage is often lower than the planned bandwidth usage, resulting in bandwidth waste and additional costs. After you activate CDT, Alibaba Cloud services that provide cross-region access support the pay-by-data-transfer metering method. You do not need to plan bandwidth usage in advance. You need to pay only for what you use, preventing bandwidth waste. For more information, see Cross-region data transfers.
For example, the business of a gaming customer involves cross-region access. After you activate CDT, the customer can manage the data transfer costs of cross-region business more flexibly, preventing bandwidth waste.
Benefits
Free data transfers: Starting from April 8, 2024, the quota of free Internet data transfers provided by CDT is increased from 20 GB/month to 200 GB/month. Among the 200 GB of free Internet data transfers, 20 GB can be used in global regions (including regions in the Chinese mainland) and the other 180 GB can be used only in regions outside the Chinese mainland.
Cost savings: CDT can bill Internet data transfers for Alibaba Cloud services that provide access to the Internet in each region based on tiered pricing. The larger the amount of Internet data transfers, the lower the unit price. For example, in the Chinese mainland, the unit price of Internet data transfers ranges from USD 0.096/GB to USD 0.118/GB.CDT
Flexible metering method: CDT can bill cross-region data transfers for Alibaba Cloud services that provide cross-region access based on the pay-by-data-transfer metering method. You do not need to plan bandwidth usage in advance and you need to pay only for what you use. This effectively prevents bandwidth waste.
Billing for multiple Alibaba Cloud services: You can use CDT to collect statistics about Internet data transfers and cross-region data transfers and bill the data transfers for different Alibaba Cloud services in a centralized manner.
Internet data transfers: CDT can bill Internet data transfers for Alibaba Cloud services such as Elastic Compute Service (ECS), EIP, CLB, and Function Compute.
Cross-region data transfers: CDT can bill cross-region data transfers for Alibaba Cloud services such as CEN, VPC peering connections, and GA.
Support for Financial Operations (FinOps): CDT allows you to use FinOps to separate resource creation from resource billing. This improves delivery efficiency. CDT can bill data transfers for different Alibaba Cloud services that provide access to the Internet or different Alibaba Cloud services that provide cross-region access. CDT also allows you to add tags to resources and split the bills of data transfers that are incurred by the resources based on the tags. This improves the collaboration efficiency of business personnel, IT personnel, and financial personnel, and helps you gain more financial control and predictability.
Activate CDT for free
After you switch to be billed by CDT for a service, you cannot switch back to the original billing mode for the service.
Log on to the CDT console, click Activate Now, and then follow the instructions to activate CDT. For more information, see Getting started.
CDT activation is not subject to any restrictions.
CDT is an out-of-the-box service and does not involve resource creation. Therefore, you are not charged for the activation or use of the CDT service. The fees that are displayed in CDT bills are billed by CDT and incurred when other Alibaba Cloud services consume data transfer resources. For more information about services that can be billed by CDT, see Supported cloud services.
After you activate CDT and use CDT to bill data transfers for Alibaba Cloud services, all existing and new pay-by-data-transfer instances are automatically billed in CDT in a centralized manner, and pay-by-bandwidth instances continue to be billed in the Alibaba Cloud services. You can query your CDT bills on the Bill Details page in the Expenses and Costs console.
Check whether you have a pay-by-data-transfer instance. If you only activate CDT but do not have a pay-by-data-transfer instance, you do not enjoy the data transfer benefits of CDT.
After you activate CDT, you can obtain a quota of 200 GB free Internet data transfers per month. Among the 200 GB of free Internet data transfers, 20 GB can be used in global regions (including regions in the Chinese mainland) and the other 180 GB can be used only in regions outside the Chinese mainland.