This topic describes the billable items, billing methods, arrears consequences, and refund policies in Cloud Storage Gateway (CSG).
Billable items
CSG provides cloud gateways and on-premises gateways. These gateways have different billable items. For more information about the pricing of CSG resources, see CSG pricing.
Cloud gateways
You are charged for gateways that are deployed on Alibaba Cloud based on their specifications, cache types, and public bandwidth. The following formulas describe the billing of cloud gateways in different billing methods:
Pay-as-you-go: Hourly gateway fee = Hourly rate based on gateway specifications + Cache capacity (GB) × Unit price per GB-hour + Public bandwidth (Mbit/s) × Unit price per Mbit/s-hour
Subscription: Yearly or monthly subscription gateway fee = Yearly or monthly subscription fee based on gateway specifications + Cache capacity (GB) × per-GB price for yearly or monthly subscription + Public bandwidth (Mbit/s) × per-Mbit/s price for yearly or monthly subscription
By default, Public Network Bandwidth is not selected for a gateway. If you want to use a gateway that resides in another region or perform express synchronization across regions, you must select Public Network Bandwidth. You are not charged a bandwidth fee for public network bandwidth that does not exceed 5 Mbit/s.
On-premises gateways
When you use on-premises gateways, you need to provide virtual machines and cache resources. You are charged by Alibaba Cloud only for gateway software licenses.
Gateways on CloudBox
To use gateways on CloudBox, you need to purchase CloudBox resources first. After CloudBox purchases, you are charged by Alibaba Cloud only for gateway software licenses.
Other fees
When you use the CSG service, the following fees can be incurred:
Fees for using OSS
You are charged for using Object Storage Service (OSS) resources. These fees include fees for data storage, traffic, requests, and data retrieval. For more information about OSS fees, see OSS pricing.
Storage fees: Files that are written to gateways are uploaded to OSS. These files occupy the storage space of OSS buckets.
Traffic fees: If you select an internal endpoint of OSS, you are not charged for read traffic and write traffic. If you select a public endpoint of OSS, you are charged for the outbound traffic over the Internet when you read files from OSS.
Request fees: You are charged when you upload files to OSS or download files from OSS by using a file gateway or an Internet Small Computer System Interface (iSCSI) gateway. If the reverse synchronization feature is enabled for a file gateway, the file gateway retrieves a list of files and metadata items from the mapped OSS bucket when you open a folder. In this case, request fees are incurred. An iSCSI gateway uploads files as fixed-size fragments. To upload large files, the gateway generates more fragments. Request fees are incurred when you upload files from an iSCSI gateway.
Data retrieval fees: You are charged based on the volume of data that is read from OSS. The volume of data that is transmitted over the Internet is included in the "outbound traffic over the Internet" billable item. To request an Archive object, you must restore the object first. You are charged data retrieval fees based on the volume of restored data. You are not repeatedly charged a data retrieval fee if you try to restore an Archive object that is already in the restored state.
NoteData retrieval fees are incurred only for Infrequent Access (IA) and Archive objects in OSS.
Fees for using Simple Log Service
If you use the log monitoring feature of CSG, CSG logs are sent to the specified Logstore in Simple Log Service. CSG logging fees are included in your Simple Log Service bills. For more information, see Simple Log Service pricing.
Fees for using KMS
If you enable server-side encryption, OSS calls Key Management Service (KMS) API operations to query, generate, encrypt, and decrypt keys.
If you enable gateway-side encryption, CSG calls KMS API operations to query, generate, encrypt, and decrypt keys.
CSG-related KMS fees are included in your KMS bills. For more information, see the KMS pricing page.
Fees for using transfer acceleration in OSS
If you enable transfer acceleration for a share, the public bandwidth of the gateway is fully utilized to increase the speed of cross-region data transfers. Transfer acceleration fees for access requests that are sent to OSS from CSG are included in your OSS bills. For more information, see Billing overview.
Fess for using SMQ
Express synchronization must be used together with Simple Message Queue (SMQ). If you enable express synchronization, you are charged for using SMQ. For more in formation, see Billing.
Billing methods
CSG provides the pay-as-you-go and subscription billing methods.
Pay-as-you-go
You are charged based on your resource usage on an hourly basis. The cost of using CSG within a given hour is your resource usage within the hour multiplied by the unit price. Your resource usage within an hour is measured when the hour ends, and the fee incurred within the hour is deducted from your account balance. For example, the bill that is displayed at 09:30:00 normally corresponds to resource usage within the time window of 08:00:00 to 09:00:00 of the same day.
The billing system has latency, which means that you may not receive the bill for the previous hour on time. For example, the most recent bill that you see at 09:30:00 may be the bill for the time window of 07:00:00 to 08:00:00 of the same day.
Subscription
In most cases, the subscription billing method is suitable for long-term usage of CSG and the pay-as-you-go billing method is suitable for short-term usage of CSG. The following table describes the CSG resources that support subscription.
Resource | Description |
Gateway | When you create a gateway, you must specify whether to use the subscription billing method. |
Cache | To configure a cache disk for a subscription gateway, you must also purchase a subscription cache disk. |
Purchase a gateway
For more information, see Purchase a gateway.
When you create a subscription gateway, set the Billing Method parameter to Subscription.
NoteWhen you select a billing cycle on the Cloud Storage Gateway (Subscription) page, do not modify other settings.
On the Cloud Storage Gateway (Subscription) page, you can select Auto-renewal to automatically renew the subscription.
Purchase a cache disk
For more information, see Purchase a cache disk.
NoteA cache disk is associated with a gateway. The billing cycles of a cache disk and a gateway may not be identical. For example, you purchase a gateway in a one-month subscription at the beginning of a month, and then purchase a cache disk in a one-month subscription in the middle of the month. If you delete the gateway at the beginning of next month or the gateway is automatically released after the subscription expires, the cache disk is also released and you are charged for the full cache subscription.
Switch billing methods
You can switch from pay-as-you-go to subscription billing to reduce costs of long-term usage.
You can change the billing method of a gateway only when the gateway is in the Running state.
Log on to the CSG console.
In the left-side navigation pane, click Gateways. On the page that appears, find the gateway and choose in the Actions column.
On the Cloud Storage Gateway (Subscription) page, select a billing cycle, and then click Buy Now.
NoteOn the Cloud Storage Gateway (Subscription) page, do not modify other settings.
Complete the payment.
Arrears consequences
An overdue payment results in the following service status changes:
Gateways that are deployed in an on-premises data center
After your payment is overdue for 24 hours, Alibaba Cloud terminates your access to the CSG service and disables CSG resource operations. The data that is stored in a local cache disk is retained but cannot be accessed. If you settle the overdue payment during the 15-day grace period, the CSG service automatically becomes accessible. Your access to data in the local cache disks is recovered.
Gateways that are deployed on the cloud
After your payment is overdue for 24 hours, Alibaba Cloud suspends your access to the CSG service and disables CSG resource operations. The data stored on cache disks is retained and continuously incurs fees.
Your access to the CSG service will be terminated by Alibaba Cloud after a 15-day suspension period, which begins at the time of suspension and ends at the same time on the 15th day. When your access is terminated, all data stored on the cache disks is deleted and cannot be recovered.
Refund policies
If a pay-as-you-go gateway is deleted, the gateway stops incurring fees.
NoteYou cannot apply for a refund on pay-as-you-go gateways.
You can request a refund on a subscription gateway if the subscription has not expired. For more information, see Subscription cancellation.