Cloud Storage Gateway:Billing

Cloud gateways

Cloud gateways are billed based on the gateway edition, gateway cache type, and the public bandwidth. Cloud gateways support the pay-as-you-go and subscription billing methods. The following formulas describe the billing of cloud gateways in different billing methods:

• Pay-as-you-go: Hourly gateway fee = Hourly rate for the gateway edition + Cache capacity (GB) × Unit price per GB-hour + Public bandwidth (Mbit/s) × Unit price per Mbit/s-hour

• Subscription: Yearly or monthly subscription price = Yearly or monthly subscription fee for the gateway edition + Cache capacity (GB) × per-GB price for yearly or monthly subscription + Public bandwidth (Mbit/s) × per-Mbit/s price for yearly or monthly subscription

CSG on CloudBox

To use gateways on CloudBox, you need to purchase CloudBox resources first. After your purchase of CloudBox resources, you are charged by Alibaba Cloud only for gateway software licenses when you use gateways on CloudBox.

Cross-zone HA file gateways

Cross-zone high-availability (HA) file gateways are billed on a pay-as-you-go basis based on the gateway edition, cache type, and public bandwidth. The following formula describes the billing details:

• Hourly gateway fee = (Hourly rate for the gateway edition + Cache capacity (GB) × Unit price per GB-hour + Public bandwidth (Mbit/s) × Unit price per Mbit/s-hour) × 2

  Note

  • A cross-zone HA file gateway incurs fees that are double those of a standalone file gateway with the identical gateway edition, cache specifications, and public bandwidth setting.

  • Cross-zone HA file gateways do not support cross-region deployment. A cross-zone HA file gateway is allocated a free bandwidth quota of 5 Mbit/s.

Other fees

When you use the CSG service, the following additional fees can be incurred:

• OSS fees

  Access to data stored in Object Storage Service (OSS) buckets from gateways incurs OSS fees, including fees for data storage, traffic, requests, and data retrieval. Those fees are included in your OSS bills.

  • Storage fees: Files that are written to gateways are uploaded to OSS. These files consume the storage space of OSS buckets.

  • Traffic fees: If you select an internal endpoint of OSS, you are not charged for read traffic and write traffic. If you select a public endpoint of OSS, you are charged for the outbound traffic over the Internet when you read files from OSS.

  • Request fees: You are charged request fees when you upload files to OSS or download files from OSS by using a file gateway or an Internet Small Computer System Interface (iSCSI) gateway. If the reverse synchronization feature is enabled for a file gateway, the file gateway retrieves a list of files and metadata items from an associated OSS bucket when you open a folder. In this case, request fees are incurred. An iSCSI gateway uploads files as fixed-size fragments and generates more fragments for uploads of larger files. Request fees are incurred when you upload files from an iSCSI gateway.

  • Data retrieval fees: You are charged based on the volume of data that is read from OSS. The volume of data that is transmitted over the Internet is included in the "outbound traffic over the Internet" billable item. To request an Archive object, you must restore the object first. You are charged data retrieval fees based on the amount of restored data. You are not repeatedly charged a data retrieval fee if you try to restore an Archive object that is already in the restored state.

    Note

    Data retrieval fees are incurred only for Infrequent Access (IA) and Archive objects in OSS.

• SLS fees

  If you use the log monitoring feature of CSG, CSG logs are sent to the specified Logstore in Simple Log Service. CSG logging fees are included in your Simple Log Service bills.

• KMS fees

  • If you enable server-side encryption, OSS calls Key Management Service (KMS) API operations to query, generate, encrypt, and decrypt keys.

  • If you enable gateway-side encryption, CSG calls KMS API operations to query, generate, encrypt, and decrypt keys.

  KMS fees are included in your KMS bills.

• OSS transfer acceleration fees

  If you enable transfer acceleration for a share, the public bandwidth of the gateway is fully utilized to increase the speed of cross-region data transfers. Transfer acceleration fees for access requests that are sent to OSS from CSG are included in your OSS bills.

• SMQ fees

  Express synchronization must be used together with Simple Message Queue (SMQ). If you enable express synchronization, you are charged for using SMQ.

Pay-as-you-go

You are charged based on your resource usage on an hourly basis. The cost of using CSG within a given hour is your resource usage within the hour multiplied by the unit price. Your resource usage within an hour is measured when the hour ends, and the fee incurred within the hour is deducted from your account balance. For example, the bill that is displayed at 09:30:00 normally corresponds to resource usage within the time window of 08:00:00 to 09:00:00 of the same day.

Subscription

In most cases, subscription billing is suitable for long-term usage of CSG and pay-as-you-go billing is suitable for short-term usage of CSG.

The following table describes the resources that support subscription.

• Purchase a subscription gateway

  • When you create a gateway, set the Billing Method parameter to Subscription.

    Note

    • On the Cloud Storage Gateway (Subscription) page, select a subscription duration and do not modify other settings.

    • On the Cloud Storage Gateway (Subscription) page, you can select Auto-renewal to automatically renew the subscription.

• Purchase a cache disk

  Note

  A cache disk is associated with a gateway. The subscription durations of a cache disk and a gateway may not be identical. For example, you purchase a gateway in a one-month subscription at the beginning of a month, and then purchase a cache disk in a one-month subscription in the middle of the month. If you delete the gateway at the beginning of next month or the gateway is automatically released after the subscription gateway expires, the cache disk is also released and you are charged for the full cache subscription.

An overdue payment results in the following service status changes:

• Gateways that are deployed in a data center

  After your payment is overdue for 24 hours, Alibaba Cloud suspends your access to the CSG service and disables CSG resource operations. The data that is stored in a local cache disk is retained but cannot be accessed. If you settle the overdue payment within 15 days following the suspension, the CSG service automatically becomes accessible. Your access to data in the local cache disks is recovered.

• Gateways that are deployed on the cloud

  • After your payment is overdue for 24 hours, Alibaba Cloud suspends your access to the CSG service and disables CSG resource operations. The data stored on cache disks is retained and continuously incurs fees.

  • Your access to the CSG service will be terminated by Alibaba Cloud after a 15-day suspension period, which begins at the time of suspension and ends at the same time on the 15th day. When your access is terminated, all data stored on the cache disks is deleted and cannot be recovered.