Alibaba Cloud File Storage NAS and Cloud Parallel File Storage offer various types of file systems. You can select one or more of these systems based on your business workloads to provide the required reliability, security, and persistence.
Selection overview
When you select an Alibaba Cloud file storage service, make your choice based on your business scenario:
AI Agent
For multi-tenant AI Agent scenarios that require independent, isolated Workspaces for many end users, choose AgenticFS. Workspaces can be used for session persistence, user-level sandboxes, and Notebook environments. For specifications, see the AgenticFS column in the comparison table. For a product overview, see AgenticFS.
Intelligent computing and HPC
For I/O-intensive scenarios with high throughput, high input/output operations per second (IOPS), and many files, such as AI training, autonomous driving, genetic computing, film and television rendering, and EDA simulation, choose CPFS or CPFS for Lingjun.
Enterprise applications
For workloads that require low response latency, such as container PersistentVolumes (PVs), Linux or Windows enterprise applications, web content management, CI/CD, and online education or gaming, choose Extreme NAS or General-purpose NAS (Advanced).
General-Purpose Sharing
For latency-insensitive, cost-sensitive workloads that require large capacity, such as database backups, log storage, Linux home or Windows user directories, and archiving, choose General-purpose NAS (Storage-optimized).
Prices vary by file system type and specifications. Choose a file storage service that meets your business needs and budget to avoid wasting resources or exceeding your budget.
You cannot convert a file system from one storage class to another. For more information about the limits of NAS and AgenticFS, see Limits for NAS and AgenticFS. For more information about the limits of CPFS, see Limits for CPFS general-purpose edition and Limits for CPFS for Lingjun.
File system selection
Selection reference | General-purpose NAS | Extreme NAS | CPFS | CPFS for Lingjun | ||||||
Storage-optimized | Advanced | Performance | 100 MB/s | 200 MB/s | 400 MB/s | |||||
Scenarios | Database Backup, log storage, Windows user directories, Linux home directories, and other cost-sensitive file sharing services that are not latency-sensitive. | Latency-sensitive file sharing workloads that require low latency, such as container data persistence, AI training data storage, industrial simulation, and genetic computing. | Latency-sensitive file sharing workloads that require low latency, such as Linux or Windows enterprise applications, container PersistentVolumes (PVs), web content management, and genetic computing. | 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. | I/O-intensive workloads that require high throughput, high IOPS, and massive numbers of files. Examples include HPC, AI training, autonomous driving, genetic computing, film and television rendering, EDA simulation, oil and gas exploration, and weather analysis. | Suitable for intelligent computing scenarios such as AIGC and autonomous driving. This file system can be used only with ACS, PAI Lingjun resources, PAI general computing resources, and PAI Lingjun resources (single-tenant). Access from ECS instances is not supported. | ||||
Features | Protocols and clients |
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Storage capacity | 0 to 10 PiB | 0 to 1 PiB | 0 to 1 PiB | 100 GiB to 256 TiB | 3.6 TiB to 1 PiB | 3.6 TiB to 1 PiB | 10 TiB to 1 PiB | |||
Maximum number of files | 1 billion | 1 billion | 1 billion | 500 million |
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| 10 billion | |||
Performance | Average 4 KB single-stream read latency | 10 ms | 2 ms | 2 ms |
| 0.6 ms | 0.4 ms | 0.25 ms | ||
Average 4 KB write latency per ingest endpoint | 10 ms | 2 ms | 2 ms |
| 0.8 ms | 0.6 ms | 0.6 ms | |||
Throughput (peak) |
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| Read + Write 20 GB/s To increase the throughput capacity, submit a ticket. |
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Maximum IOPS | 15,000 | 30,000 | 30,000 | 200,000 | 1,500,000 | 2,800,000 |
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Scalability | Scale-in | Support | Support | Supported | Not supported | Not supported | Not supported | Not supported | ||
Scale-out | Support | Support | Supported | Support | Support | Support | Support | |||
Scaling method | Automatic scaling | Automatic scaling | Automatic scaling | Manual scaling | Manual scaling | Manual scaling | Manual scaling | |||
Scaling step size | 4 KiB | 4 KiB | 4 KiB | 1 GiB |
| 10 TiB Maximum file system size: 5 PiB. To request a larger capacity, please submit a ticket. | ||||
Security | Server-side encryption | Support | Supported | Support | Supported | Support | Support | Not supported | ||
Encryption in transit | Support | Support | Supported | Not supported | Supported | Supported | Not supported | |||
AD domain control (SMB) | Supported | Support | Supported | Not supported | Not supported | Not supported | Not supported | |||
ACL-based access control | Support | Support | Supported | Not supported | Support | Supported | Not supported | |||
Stability | Quotas | NFS | Support | Supported | Supported | Not supported | Not supported | Not supported | Not supported | |
SMB | Supported | Support | Support | |||||||
Subdirectory mounting | NFS | Supported | Supported | Supported | Not supported | Support | Support | Not supported | ||
SMB | Not supported | Not supported | Not supported | Not supported | Not supported | Not supported | ||||
Recycle bin | Support | Supported | Supported | Not supported | Not supported | Not supported | Not supported | |||
Lifecycle | Support | Supported | Support | Not supported | Not supported | Not supported | Not supported | |||
Backups | Support | Supported | Support | Support | Support | Support | Supported | |||
Snapshots | Not supported | Not supported | Not supported |
| Not supported | Not supported | Not supported | |||
Locally redundant storage | Support | Support | Supported | Supported | Support | Supported | Support | |||
Zone-redundant storage (Multi-AZ) | Not supported | Not supported | Not supported | Not supported | Supported | Not supported | Not supported | |||
Cost | Pay-as-you-go (USD/GiB/month) | 0.06 | 0.13 | 0.30 |
| 0.83 | 1.4 | 0.244 | ||
Resource plans | Supported | Supported | Supported | Support | Support | Support | Not supported | |||
SCU | Support | Not supported | Support | Not supported | Not supported | Not supported | Not supported | |||
Storage plans | No longer available for purchase | Not supported | No longer available for purchase | Not supported | Not supported | Not supported | Not supported | |||
Subscription | Not supported | Not supported | Not supported | No longer available for purchase | New purchases not supported | New purchases not supported | Not supported | |||
The pay-as-you-go prices in the preceding table are the reference prices on July 18, 2024 in regions in the Chinese mainland. Actual prices in the Chinese mainland and other regions are subject to the latest prices on the official pricing pages. For more information about NAS file system billing, see NAS Pricing. For more information about CPFS file system billing, see CPFS Pricing.