NAS file systems are ideal for scenarios such as big data analysis, shared data, web applications, and log storage. They can be mounted as persistent volumes in containers to fulfill the needs for persistent and shared storage. With the Alibaba Cloud CSI widget, you can mount NAS file systems either through CNFS-managed NAS or directly within containers.
How to choose NAS
NAS offers two storage classes: General-purpose and Extreme. Based on your requirements, you can choose the appropriate class by consulting the selection guide and evaluating performance metrics such as peak throughput and IOPS. For detailed storage specifications, see:
Billing information
For NAS billing information, refer to General-purpose NAS billing, Extreme NAS billing, and . For international pricing details, visit File Storage NAS pricing.
How to use
The capacity of NAS file systems can scale elastically. As files are added or removed, the system's capacity automatically adjusts within its maximum limits. NAS supports shared storage and serves multiple pods. You can use NAS file systems directly in containers or employ CNFS-managed NAS to enhance performance and QoS. CNFS-managed NAS addresses issues such as imprecise capacity quota control, file recovery, monitoring of storage volume capacity and performance, security encryption, and latency in small file operations. The differences between the two methods are as follows:
Comparison item | Use CNFS-managed NAS (recommended) | Directly use NAS |
Supported NAS types | Supports general-purpose NAS (performance and capacity types). Does not support extreme NAS or general-purpose advanced NAS. |
|
Cluster and widget requirements |
| N/A |
Scale-out persistent volumes | Resource quotas are enabled by default to address insufficient storage capacity. Supports dynamic auto-scaling to increase the capacity limit. For more information, see Use CNFS to automatically scale NAS persistent volumes. | Only general-purpose NAS supports the folder quota feature, and you must manually scale the capacity of NAS dynamic persistent volumes. |
Data restoration | The recycle bin is enabled by default to prevent accidental data deletion. You can directly use the recycle bin feature to restore NAS file data. For billing and usage information about the recycle bin, see Usage notes. | You must manually go to the NAS console to enable the recycle bin feature. |
Accelerate data reading | Supports enabling CNFS NAS compute-side distributed cache to provide small file operation performance close to that of local file systems. Note
| Not supported |
Store application data | You can use CNFS to manage NAS shared persistent volumes or use CNFS to manage NAS isolated persistent volumes. CNFS-managed NAS isolated persistent volumes support mounting in subpath and sharepath modes. | You can directly use NAS static persistent volumes or use NAS dynamic persistent volumes in containers. NAS static persistent volumes do not support scaling. NAS dynamic persistent volumes support mounting in subpath, sharepath, and filesystem modes. |
Limits
The CSI widget does not support mounting NAS file systems that utilize the SMB protocol. Mounting file systems using the NFSv3 protocol is recommended.
NAS cannot be mounted across VPCs. It only supports mounting within the same VPC.
References
You can create, mount, and uninstall persistent volumes using the CSI widget. For more information, see Manage csi-plugin and csi-provisioner widgets.
For troubleshooting access permission issues with NAS persistent volumes, see Access denied when using NAS persistent volumes.
For solutions to ensure data security among different users and user groups, see How to isolate NAS users or user groups.
For troubleshooting read or write access issues with NAS, see Read and write access issues.
For troubleshooting issues with NAS in containers, see NAS persistent volumes FAQ.