Alibaba Cloud File Storage NAS is a shared file storage service for compute nodes such as ECS instances, E-HPC, and container services. It provides a high-performance, highly reliable, and elastically scalable distributed file system.
Product overview
File Storage NAS is built on POSIX file interfaces, which makes it natively compatible with standard operating systems. It provides shared access while ensuring data consistency and file locking. File Storage NAS offers simple and scalable file storage for use with ECS. Multiple ECS instances can access a file system at the same time. The storage capacity automatically scales as you add or remove files. This provides a common data source for applications and workloads running on multiple instances or servers.
File Storage NAS provides the following file system types: General-purpose Capacity, General-purpose Premium, General-purpose Performance, Extreme Advanced, Extreme Standard, and AgenticFS. You can refer to the selection guide to choose one or more file system types that best fit your workload requirements for reliability, security, and continuity.
General-purpose NAS: stores frequently accessed hot data. This type includes General-purpose Capacity, General-purpose Premium, and General-purpose Performance file systems. It is suitable for general-purpose file sharing workloads, such as enterprise applications for Linux or Windows, web content management, database backups, log storage, and home directories.
Extreme NAS: a high-performance shared file storage product that is built on Alibaba Cloud's latest-generation network architecture and all-flash storage. This fully managed service seamlessly integrates with a wide range of Alibaba Cloud compute services to leverage the full capabilities of the public cloud. It is ideal for latency-sensitive enterprise applications on Linux, CI/CD development and testing environments, high-performance web services, online education services, online gaming services, and databases.
AgenticFS: a serverless file storage service that is designed for AI Agent scenarios. A single file system can manage up to 500,000 AgenticSpaces and supports capacity quotas, permission isolation, and performance isolation. It is suitable for storing persistent data in AI Agent applications, such as session records, memory data, Markdown files, and skills. For more information, see AgenticFS.
File Storage NAS supports a wide range of application scenarios. For more information, see Application scenarios.
Benefits
File Storage NAS is cost-effective, secure, simple, reliable, and high-performance.
Cost-effectiveness
A single NAS file system can be mounted on multiple compute nodes for shared access. This helps reduce the costs of data copying and synchronization.
The performance of a single NAS file system scales linearly with storage capacity. This eliminates the need to purchase high-end file storage devices and significantly reduces hardware costs.
With File Storage NAS, you pay only for the storage space that you use. You do not need to provision storage in advance. No minimum fees or setup fees are required. For more information, see Pricing.
The high reliability of File Storage NAS reduces data security risks and maintenance costs.
Simplicity
You can create a file system in the console with just a few clicks, requiring no deployment or maintenance.
Security
File Storage NAS provides RAM-based resource access control and VPC-based network isolation. These features, combined with support for encryption in transit and server-side encryption, protect your data from theft and tampering.
High reliability
File Storage NAS uses a single-zone data storage mechanism to store multiple replicas of your data on different devices within the same zone. This provides 99.999999999% (eleven 9s) data durability and 99.95% service availability, effectively reducing data security risks.
High performance
Built on a distributed file system architecture, File Storage NAS scales linearly with capacity and delivers significantly higher performance than traditional storage systems.
Compatibility
File Storage NAS is highly compatible with standard protocols. It supports NFS and SMB, is compatible with POSIX file access semantics, and ensures strong data consistency and file locking.
In File Storage NAS, any file modification is immediately visible to all users, enabling real-time collaboration.
Key features
Lifecycle Management
The lifecycle management feature helps you optimize storage costs. If a file system contains files that are accessed fewer than two times per month, you can enable this feature for General-purpose NAS. Files that meet the lifecycle policy are automatically transitioned to Infrequent Access (IA) or archive storage and are billed at lower rates. For more information, see Configure a lifecycle policy.
Supported file system types: General-purpose NAS.
ACL
NAS SMB ACL: Manages user identities and permissions for SMB file systems that are based on Active Directory (AD) domains. This feature supports file system-level authentication and access control based on an allowlist of Alibaba Cloud accounts and source IP address-based permission groups. For more information, see SMB ACL for File Storage NAS.
NAS NFS ACL: You can enable NFS ACL in the console to set permissions for different user groups and implement access isolation. You can set permissions for specific users and groups other than the default owner, group, and others. For more information, see NFS ACL for File Storage NAS.
Supported file system types: General-purpose NAS and Extreme NAS support both NFS ACLs and SMB ACLs. AgenticFS supports only NFS ACLs and does not support the SMB protocol.
Quota
You can use the quota management feature to manage directory-level quotas in File Storage NAS, including adding, editing, and deleting quotas. For more information, see Directory-based quotas.
Supported file system types: General-purpose NAS, Extreme NAS, and AgenticFS.
Data encryption
Server-side encryption: File Storage NAS encrypts data at rest. When you access the data, it is automatically decrypted. For more information, see Server-side encryption.
Encryption in transit for NFS file systems: protects data that is transmitted between ECS instances and the File Storage NAS service by using the TLS protocol. This ensures that data is not stolen or tampered with during transmission. For more information, see Encryption in transit for NFS file systems.
Encryption in transit for SMB file systems: uses an authenticated encryption algorithm to secure data that is transmitted between ECS instances and the File Storage NAS service. This ensures that data is not stolen or tampered with during transmission. For more information, see Encryption in transit for SMB file systems.
Supported file system types: Server-side encryption is supported for General-purpose NAS and Extreme NAS. Encryption in transit for NFS is supported for General-purpose NAS, Extreme NAS, and AgenticFS. Encryption in transit for SMB is supported only for General-purpose NAS and Extreme NAS.
Backup
You can use flexible backup policies to generate multiple backup copies for timely file recovery in case of data loss or damage. For more information, see General-purpose NAS backup.
Supported file system types: General-purpose NAS and Extreme NAS.
Recycle Bin
When the recycle bin feature is enabled, deleted files or directories are temporarily stored in the recycle bin. If you accidentally delete files from a file system, you can restore these files and their metadata, such as UIDs, GIDs, and ACLs, from the recycle bin. For more information, see Recycle bin.
Supported file system types: General-purpose NAS and Extreme NAS.
Data erasure mechanism
Data that you delete cannot be accessed by other users. Deleted data in File Storage NAS is always completely erased. The following mechanisms ensure complete data erasure:
The data of File Storage NAS instances from different users is completely isolated. The data of each instance is managed by its own metadata. Data reads are indexed and verified against the metadata. This prevents cross-instance access.
When a file in a File Storage NAS instance is deleted, the metadata index is immediately updated to ensure that the corresponding physical space can no longer be indexed. Therefore, the data can no longer be read. When this physical space is reallocated, it is first zeroed out and then added back to the metadata index. This ensures that the first read from the reallocated space returns all zeros.
When you release a File Storage NAS instance, the storage system immediately destroys the metadata to ensure that the data can no longer be accessed. At the same time, the physical storage space of the instance is reclaimed. Before the physical space is reallocated, it is first zeroed out to ensure that any attempt to read from an unwritten address returns all zeros. The space is then overwritten by new data.
Usage
You can create, use, or release your File Storage NAS resources in the following ways:
Manage File Storage NAS in the console
File Storage NAS provides a web-based service page. You can log on to the File Storage NAS console to manage your File Storage NAS resources. For more information, see Quick starts.
Manage File Storage NAS by using the API or SDKs
File Storage NAS provides RESTful API operations and SDKs for multiple programming languages to facilitate custom development. For more information, see Integration overview and Alibaba Cloud NAS SDKs.
Pricing
For more information about the billing rules of File Storage NAS, see Billing overview. For detailed pricing information, see the File Storage NAS pricing page.
Deactivate File Storage NAS
After the service is activated, you cannot deactivate it directly. If you activate the service but do not create a file system, no fees are incurred.
If fees have been incurred and you want to stop using this product and stop the billing, see How do I deactivate File Storage NAS or stop being charged for File Storage NAS? Note that data cannot be restored after a File Storage NAS file system is deleted.
To view the reasons for specific charges, see View your bills and usage details.
Related services
After you store data in File Storage NAS, you can use other Alibaba Cloud products and services to perform related operations on the data.
The following Alibaba Cloud products and services are frequently used with File Storage NAS:
Elastic Compute Service provides simple, efficient, and elastically scalable cloud computing services. For more information, see the ECS product page.
Data Online Migration: You can use the Data Online Migration service to migrate data from OSS to File Storage NAS. For more information, see the Data Online Migration documentation.
Cloud Backup: You can use the Cloud Backup service to periodically back up your File Storage NAS files and restore them in a timely manner if data is lost or damaged. For more information, see the Cloud Backup product page.
Cloud Monitor: You can use Cloud Monitor to view performance and capacity metrics for your File Storage NAS file systems and set alerts for these metrics. For more information, see the CloudMonitor product page.