After you create an Extreme NAS file system, you are billed based on the pay-as-you-go billing method by default. You can also purchase resource plans to offset storage usage fees of Extreme NAS file systems. This topic describes how you are billed for Extreme NAS file systems and how you can renew Extreme NAS file systems.

Billable items

Billable item Description
Storage capacity You are billed based on the storage capacity that you purchase. The billing cycle is 1 hour.

Billing methods

  • Pay-as-you-go

    After you create a NAS file system, you are billed based on the pay-as-you-go billing method by default.

    The storage usage fee is calculated by using the following formula: Storage usage fee = Capacity of the Extreme NAS file system × Unit price per hour.

    In the preceding formula, the capacity of the Extreme NAS file system is the capacity that you purchased. You are billed per hour based on the capacity instead of the storage usage.
    Note For NAS file systems, the unit of storage usage fee is USD/GiB/month. When you calculate the storage usage fee, you must convert the unit of measurement to USD/GiB/hour. For more information, see Apsara File Storage NAS pricing.
  • Resource plan

    A resource plan is a type of subscription billing method. You can purchase multiple resource plans and use the resource plans to offset the storage usage fees of multiple file systems.

    • Purchase method
      You can use resource plans to offset the storage usage fees of a pay-as-you-go Extreme NAS file system. For more information, see Purchase resource plans.
      Note You cannot change the billing method of Extreme NAS file systems from subscription to pay-as-you-go. You cannot use resource plans to offset the storage usage fees of subscription Extreme NAS file systems.
    • Offset rules
      The following table describes the offset rules that apply when you use resource plans to offset the storage usage fees of different storage types of NAS file systems in the Chinese mainland. To view the information about the offset rules that apply in other regions, you can use the calculator.
      Specification Conversion coefficient Description
      Standard Extreme NAS 1 You can use 1 GiB of base capacity in your Extreme NAS resource plan to offset 1 GiB of storage usage from a standard Extreme NAS file system.
      Advanced Extreme NAS 1 You can use 1 GiB of base capacity in your Extreme NAS resource plan to offset 1 GiB of storage usage from an advanced Extreme NAS file system.
      You can use the calculator that is provided by Alibaba Cloud to calculate the fees that are offset by the resource plans within your account in the current region. This way, you can select appropriate resource plans based on the current storage usage to reduce your costs.
    • Renewal and upgrade

      If you do not renew your resource plan when it expires, you can still use the associated file system. However, the billing method of the file system is changed to pay-as-you-go.

      You can renew and upgrade a resource plan. For more information, see Manage resource plans.

  • Subscription

    Subscription is a type of billing method that you can use to offset the storage usage fees of only the existing subscription Extreme NAS file systems.

    Note Alibaba Cloud has released resource plans for Apsara File Storage NAS. You can no longer purchase subscription Extreme NAS file systems. However, you can still renew and upgrade the existing Extreme NAS file systems. You can use a storage plan to offset the storage usage fees of only the Extreme NAS file system to which the storage plan is attached. In contrast, you can use multiple resource plans to offset the storage usage fees of multiple Extreme NAS file systems.
    • Offset rules
      • After you create a subscription Extreme NAS file system, NAS offsets the subscription quota based on the maximum capacity of your file system.
      • The storage capacity that you purchased is the maximum storage capacity of the Extreme NAS file system. If the size of the data that you want to write to the file system exceeds the capacity, you must scale up the file system. Otherwise, the excess data cannot be written to the file system. For more information, see Scale up an Extreme NAS file system.
    • Renewal

      If a subscription Extreme NAS file system expires, it is automatically stopped 15 days later. The data is temporarily retained but is inaccessible. If you renew the file system within 15 days after it is stopped, the file system is automatically resumed. If you do not renew the file system within 15 days after it is stopped, the file system will be released and data cannot be retrieved. For more information, see Renew a subscription Extreme NAS file system.

Example

In this example, Mr. Wang has created an Extreme NAS file system in the China (Hangzhou) region. The average storage usage per hour in July 2020 was 1 TiB. The following table lists the monthly fees that were incurred by the file system based on the pay-as-you-go billing method and a resource plan (1 TiB, one month).
Billing method Fee
Pay-as-you-go Storage usage fee = 1,024 GiB × 0.3 USD/GiB/month = USD 307.2
Resource plan Storage usage fee = USD 252.8256

USD 252.8256 is the fee of the resource plan (1 TiB, one month) that Mr. Wang purchased for the subscription Extreme NAS file system.

Renew a subscription Extreme NAS file system

If you have a subscription Extreme NAS file system, you can renew the file system before it expires. If you renew the file system, you can select a duration to specify the validity period for the file system. If you enabled the auto-renewal feature when you created your subscription Extreme NAS file system, you can disable the feature in the User Center.

If a subscription Extreme NAS file system expires, it is automatically stopped 15 days later. If you do not renew the file system within 15 days after it is stopped, the file system will be released.

  • Manually renew the file system
    1. Log on to the NAS console.
    2. In the left-side navigation pane, choose File System > File System List. Find the file system, and choose More > Renewal Fee in the Actions column.
    3. On the Renew page, select a duration. The expiration date appears.

      The minimum duration is one month and the maximum duration is three years. You can renew the Extreme NAS file system again before it expires.

    4. Confirm your settings, select Extreme NAS Terms of Service, click Buy Now, and then complete the payment as prompted.
  • Disable auto-renewal for the file system
    1. Log on to the Bill Management console.
    2. On the Auto tab, find the Extreme NAS file system for which you want to disable auto-renewal.
    3. In the Actions column, click Nonrenewal.
    4. In the Set as Nonrenewal dialog box, click OK.

      On the Nonrenewal tab, you can view the Extreme NAS file system for which auto-renewal is disabled.

FAQ