Data Lake Formation:Billing modes

Storage of metadata objects

Metadata objects are the databases, tables, partitions, and indexes stored in your data lake's metadata. Every object in these four categories counts toward your monthly total.

Pricing

• Billing rule: The first 1 million stored objects each month are free. For usage that exceeds this free tier, you are charged USD 1 per month for every 100,000 additional objects. Any fraction of 100,000 objects is billed as a full 100,000 objects.

Partial blocks of 100,000 are rounded up. For example, 115,100 excess objects are billed as 200,000 objects (2 blocks).

Billing cycle

Usage is counted monthly. Bills are generated and payments are settled on the 1st of each month. If your usage falls below the minimum charge threshold, no charge applies.

Billing examples

Detailed example

On January 1, your data lake contains 100 databases, 10,000 tables, 500,000 partitions, and 5,000 indexes — 515,100 objects in total.

By January 31, you add 600,000 partitions. The total grows to 1,115,100 objects.

On February 1, your bill shows:

• First 1,000,000 objects: free

• Excess: 115,100 objects, rounded up to 200,000 (2 blocks) — USD 2

• On February 1, you receive a bill. The total charge is USD 0 (for the first 1 million free objects) + USD 2 (for the remaining 115,100 objects, which are billed as 200,000 objects) = USD 2.

• On February 1, USD 2 is deducted from your account for the metadata object storage fees incurred in January.

USD 2 is deducted from your account on February 1 as the January storage fee.

Metadata requests

Metadata requests are create, read, modify, and delete operations on databases, tables, partitions, indexes, and functions in your data lake's metadata.

What counts as a metadata request

Requests are generated when you:

• Execute DDL statements (such as CREATE TABLE, ALTER TABLE, DROP PARTITION) in a connected compute engine — E-MapReduce (EMR) Hive, EMR Spark SQL, EMR Presto, or MaxCompute

• Manage metadata objects from the DLF console or via API operations (such as creating, updating, or deleting databases, tables, or partitions)

Pricing

• Billing rule: The first 1 million requests each month are free. For usage that exceeds this free tier, you are charged USD 1 for every 1 million additional requests. Any fraction of 1 million requests is billed as a full 1 million requests.

Partial millions are rounded up to the nearest million. For example, 200,000 excess requests are billed as 1,000,000 requests.

Billing cycle

Usage is counted monthly. Bills are generated and payments are settled on the 1st of each month. If your usage falls below the minimum charge threshold, no charge applies.

Billing examples

Detailed example

In January, compute engines including EMR, MaxCompute, and Hologres send 1,200,000 requests to your DLF metadata.

On February 1, your bill shows:

• First 1,000,000 requests: free

• Excess: 200,000 requests, rounded up to 1,000,000 — USD 1

• In January, you made 1.2 million metadata requests from compute engines such as EMR, MaxCompute, and Hologres. The total charge for January is USD 0 (for the first 1 million free requests) + USD 1 (for the remaining 200,000 requests, which are billed as 1 million requests) = USD 1.

• On February 1, USD 1 is deducted from your account for the metadata request fees incurred in January.

USD 1 is deducted from your account on February 1 as the January request fee.

Data ingestion

Data ingestion extracts data from external sources and loads it into your DLF data lake.

This feature has stopped updating.

Data ingestion tasks themselves are free. However, if you use other services to move data, those services incur their own charges. For example, synchronizing data from ApsaraDB RDS to your data lake requires a Data Transmission Service (DTS) instance, which is billed separately.

Data import jobs are free of charge. However, if a data import job uses other products, additional fees may apply. For example, if you use DTS for an RDS data import job, a DTS instance is created, which incurs DTS fees.