Alibaba Cloud provides ESSD AutoPL disks based on enhanced SSDs (ESSDs). ESSD AutoPL disks inherit the features and performance of ESSDs and decouple disk capacity from disk performance. When you configure the capacity of ESSD AutoPL disks, you can configure provisioned performance and burst performance settings for the disks based on your business requirements. This topic describes the features, specifications, billing methods, and use scenarios of ESSD AutoPL disks and provides examples on how to configure the disks.

Note The instance to which an ESSD AutoPL disk is attached exerts pressure on the ESSD AutoPL disk. The performance of all applications that run on the instance, such as Alibaba Cloud Security, CloudMonitor, and Cloud Assistant, is included in the performance statistics of the ESSD AutoPL disk.

Features

ESSD AutoPL disks can deliver the following levels of performance: baseline performance, provisioned performance, and burst performance. The baseline performance of an ESSD AutoPL disk is equivalent to the performance of an ESSD at performance level 1 (PL1 ESSD) that has the same specifications. ESSD AutoPL disks support the performance provision feature and the performance burst feature and can deliver up to 1,000,000 IOPS, a maximum throughput of 4 GB/s, and a maximum performance density of 1,000 IOPS/GB.
  • Performance provision

    The performance provision feature allows you to configure provisioned performance settings for ESSD AutoPL disks to meet storage requirements that exceed the baseline performance without the need to extend the disks.

  • Performance burst
    By default, the performance burst feature is enabled for ESSD AutoPL disks. The feature allows ESSD AutoPL disks to burst their performance when spikes in read/write workloads occur and reduce the performance to the baseline level at the end of workload spikes.
    Note ESSD AutoPL disks for which the multi-attach feature is enabled do not support the performance burst feature. For information about the multi-attach feature, see NVMe disks.

Use scenarios

In addition to the scenarios for which ESSDs are suitable, such as latency-sensitive applications and I/O-intensive workloads, ESSD AutoPL disks are also suitable for the following scenarios:
  • Scenarios in which disk performance needs to be increased without extending disk capacity.
  • Scenarios in which business workloads significantly fluctuate and disks need to burst their performance when workload spikes occur.

Disk specifications

The following table describes the specifications of ESSD AutoPL disks.
Performance levelDisk attributeSpecifications
Baseline performanceCapacity range (GiB)40 to 32,768
Maximum IOPS per disk50,000
Maximum I/O size (KB)16
Maximum throughput per disk (MB/s)350
Average one-way random write latency (ms)0.2
Formula used to calculate IOPS per disk (baseline IOPS①)min{1,800 + 50 × Capacity, 50,000}
Formula used to calculate throughput per disk (baseline throughput①, MB/s)min{120 + 0.5 × Capacity, 350}
Provisioned performanceMaximum provisioned IOPS② per disk50,000
Formula used to calculate IOPS per disk (provisioned IOPS②)min{Provisioned IOPS, 50,000}
Formula used to calculate throughput per disk (provisioned throughput②, MB/s)min{16 KB × Provisioned IOPS/1,024, Maximum throughput per disk}
Burst performanceBurst IOPS③min{Burst IOPS supported by the instance type, 1,000,000}
Burst throughputmin{Burst throughput supported by the instance type, 4 GB/s}
Note: The total performance of an ESSD AutoPL disk is the sum of baseline performance①, provisioned performance②, and burst performance③, and cannot exceed 1,000 IOPS per GB.
  • ①: indicates the baseline performance that an ESSD AutoPL disk can deliver, excluding provisioned performance and burst performance.
  • ②: indicates the provisioned performance that an ESSD AutoPL disk can deliver, in addition to baseline performance.
  • ③: indicates the burst performance that an ESSD AutoPL disk can deliver, in addition to baseline performance and provisioned performance.

Supported instance families

ESSD AutoPL disks support the same instance families as ESSDs. For information about instance families supported by ESSD AutoPL disks, see Overview of instance families.

Billing

  • Billable items and billing rules

    You are charged for an ESSD AutoPL disk for the disk capacity, provisioned performance, and burst performance. The baseline performance of an ESSD AutoPL disk is equivalent to the performance of a PL1 ESSD that has the same specifications. The provisioned performance and burst performance of an ESSD AutoPL disk are billed by using the pay-as-you-go billing method after the performance provision feature and the performance burst feature are enabled. For more information, see Block storage devices.

  • Pricing

    For information about the pricing of ESSD AutoPL disks, see the Pricing tab of the Elastic Compute Service (ECS) product page.

  • Impacts of overdue payments

    If your Alibaba Cloud account has overdue payments for the provisioned performance and burst performance of ESSD AutoPL disks, Alibaba Cloud stops providing the performance provision feature and the performance burst feature for ESSD AutoPL disks. The baseline performance of the ESSD AutoPL disks is not affected. If you want to continue using the performance provision feature and the performance burst feature for the ESSD AutoPL disks, you must complete the overdue payments. After you complete the overdue payments, the performance provision feature and the performance burst feature become available for the ESSD AutoPL disks.

Create and configure an ESSD AutoPL disk

When you create an ESSD AutoPL disk separately or together with an ECS instance in the ECS console, you can specify a disk capacity, and configure provisioned performance and burst performance settings for the disk based on your business requirements to improve disk performance. For information about how to create an ECS instance and a disk, see Create an instance by using the wizard and Create a disk.

This section provides an example on how to create an ESSD AutoPL disk in the ECS console, and how to configure provisioned performance and burst performance settings for the disk.
  1. Log on to the ECS console.
  2. In the left-side navigation pane, choose Storage & Snapshots > Disks.
  3. In the upper-left corner of the top navigation bar, select a region.
  4. On the Disks page, click Create Disk.
  5. On the Disk page, configure parameters to create an ESSD AutoPL disk.
    • In the Storage section, select ESSD AutoPL as the disk category and specify a disk capacity.
    • Select Performance Provision to enable the performance provision feature for the disk and specify a provisioned IOPS.
    • By default, Enable Burst is selected. You can disable the performance burst feature based on your business requirements.
    • For information about how to configure other parameters, see Create a disk.
    Configure provisioned performance settings
  6. Confirm the configurations and fees and click Preview.
  7. In the Preview message, confirm the purchase information and then click Create.

    After the ESSD AutoPL disk is created, you can view the disk on the Disks page.