This topic describes the entire process from creating to using an Apsara File Storage NAS (NAS) file system, helping you quickly get started with NAS.
NAS overview
NAS is a cloud service that provides file storage for compute nodes. The compute nodes include Elastic Compute Service (ECS) instances, Elastic High Performance Computing (E-HPC) clusters, and Container Service for Kubernetes (ACK) clusters. NAS is a distributed file storage solution that provides the following benefits: shared access, scalability, high reliability, and high performance.
NAS supports Portable Operating System Interface for UNIX (POSIX)-based APIs. A NAS file system can be mounted on thousands of compute nodes for shared storage. The compute nodes include ECS instances, ECS Bare Metal instances, ACK clusters, elastic container instances (ECIs), Batch Compute instances, E-HPC clusters, and Platform for AI (PAI) models. You can mount NAS file systems to provide high-performance shared storage for these compute resources. You can seamlessly migrate your business systems to Alibaba Cloud without the need to modify your application code.
Storage classes of NAS file systems
NAS provides three storage classes of file systems and supports the Network File System (NFS) and Server Message Block (SMB) protocols. You can select one or more storage classes of file systems based on your workloads to ensure reliability, security, and continuity for your workloads. For more information, see How do I select file systems?
Scenarios of file systems
Performance NAS file systems: latency-sensitive file sharing workloads such as Linux or Windows applications for enterprises, container persistent volumes (PVs), web content management, and genetic computing.
Capacity NAS file systems: cost-sensitive file sharing workloads that require moderate latency, such as database backup, log storage, Windows user directory, and Linux home directory.
Extreme NAS file systems: latency-sensitive Linux applications for enterprises, development and test environments for continuous integration and continuous deployment (CI/CD), high-performance web services, online education services, and online gaming services.
NAS billing
The default billing method is pay-as-you-go when you use NAS. Resource plans and storage capacity units (SCUs) are also supported. Storage plans and the subscription billing method have been replaced with resource plans. You can no longer purchase storage plans or subscription file systems. For more information, see Billing overview.
Billing method | Description |
You are charged for General-purpose NAS file systems based on the actual storage usage of each billable item. You are charged for Extreme NAS file systems based on the provisioned capacity. You can use NAS resources before you pay for them. The pay-as-you-go billing method is ideal for business with fluctuating resource usage. | |
You can purchase resource plans for different file systems to offset the fees for billable items. The fees offset by resource plans are not included into your pay-as-you-go bills. To offset storage usage fees by using resource plans, you need to purchase resource plans in advance. Resource plans are ideal for business with stable resource usage. | |
SCUs are subscription storage resource plans that can be used to offset the storage usage fees of various Alibaba Cloud storage services. | |
You can use a storage plan to offset only the storage usage fees of a NAS file system to which the storage plan is attached. Alibaba Cloud provides resource plans as an alternative to storage plans. You can no longer purchase storage plans. However, you can renew or upgrade existing storage plans. | |
The subscription billing method can be used to offset the storage usage fees of only existing subscription Extreme NAS file systems. Alibaba Cloud provides resource plans as an alternative to the subscription billing method. You can no longer purchase subscription file systems. However, you can renew or scale out existing subscription file systems. |
Examples
Mount a NAS file system on an ECS instance
Mount a NAS file system on a Data Science Workshop (DSW) instance
For more information about how to mount a NAS file system, see Usage notes.
Common operations on file systems
Operation | References |
Create a file system | |
Create a mount target | |
Create a permission group and add rules to the permission group | |
Mount a file system | |
Migrate data to a NAS file system | |
Migrate data from a NAS file system to an on-premises storage system | Migrate data from a NAS file system to an on-premises storage system |
Unmount a file system from an ECS instance | |
Delete a file system | |
Monitor file usage | |
Limit the number of directories or files in a directory | |
Back up data in a file system | |
Dump cold data from a file system | |
Encrypt data in a file system | |
Configure access control lists (ACLs) for a file system |