Create subscription or pay-as-you-go data disks to increase the storage space of ECS instances - Elastic Compute Service

You can create a new subscription or pay-as-you-go data disk and attach the disk to an Elastic Compute Service (ECS) instance to increase the storage space of the instance. This topic describes how to create a data disk.

Limits

The following table describes the limits that are imposed on cloud disks that use different billing methods.

Disk	Limits
Pay-as-you-go disk	For information about the pay-as-you-go billing method, see Pay-as-you-go.
Subscription disk	When you create a subscription disk, you must attach it to a subscription ECS instance. You cannot separately create subscription disks. You cannot separately detach or release subscription disks. Subscription disks expire and are released together with the ECS instances to which they are attached. If you want to release a subscription disk, you can convert it into a pay-as-you-go disk, and then detach and release the disk.

Disks are independent of each other. You cannot merge disks by formatting them. Before you create disks, we recommend that you determine the number and capacity of disks that you need based on your business requirements.

Procedure

Log on to the ECS console.
In the left-side navigation pane, choose Storage & Snapshots > Block Storage.
On the Block Storage page, click Create Cloud Disk.

On the cloud disk buy page that appears, configure the parameters described in the following table.

Parameter	Description
Attach	Specify whether to attach the cloud disks that you want to create to an ECS instance. Not Attach: creates cloud disks without attaching them to ECS instances. If you select this option, you can create only pay-as-you-go cloud disks. The disks and the ECS instances to which you want to attach the disks must reside in the same zone. Proceed with caution when you configure the Region and Zone parameters. Attach to ECS Instance: creates cloud disks and attaches the disks to a specific ECS instance that resides in the same zone as the disks. If you select this option, you must select a region and select an ECS instance from the ECS Instance drop-down list.
Billing Method	Specify the billing method of the cloud disks. Pay-as-you-go: Pay-as-you-go disks can be attached to subscription or pay-as-you-go ECS instances. Subscription: Subscription disks must be attached to subscription ECS instances.
Cloud Disk	Select a disk category and specify a disk capacity. Configure the following parameters based on your business requirements: Performance: You can specify performance levels for only Enterprise SSDs (ESSDs). You can select a performance level based on the capacity of an ESSD. The performance of an ESSD varies based on the capacity and performance level of the ESSD. For more information, see ESSDs. Create from Snapshot: Select a snapshot to create cloud disks. The created cloud disks contain data from the selected snapshot. For more information, see Create a disk from a snapshot. Multi-attach: You can select this option to enable the multi-attach feature for ESSD-series disks. This way, you can attach each created ESSD-series disk to multiple ECS instances in the same zone. For more information, see Multi-attach for cloud disks. Encryption: Specify whether to encrypt the cloud disks. If you select this option, data stored on the created cloud disks is automatically encrypted. For more information, see Overview. Enable Performance Provision and Enable Performance Burst: You can select these options to enable the performance provision and performance burst features when you create ESSD AutoPL disks. For more information, see ESSD AutoPL disks. Release settings: If you set Attach to Attach to ECS Instance and Billing Method to Pay-as-you-go, you can select the following options for the cloud disks: Release with Instance and Delete Automatic Snapshots While Releasing Instance. If you select Release with Instance, the created cloud disks will be automatically released when the associated ECS instance is released. If you select Delete Automatic Snapshots While Releasing Instance, the automatic snapshots of the created cloud disks are automatically deleted when the disks are released.

Confirm the configurations and fees, click Preview, and then proceed as prompted to create the cloud disks.
After a cloud disk is created, you can view it on the Cloud Disk tab. However, the cloud disk cannot be directly used on ECS instances.

The following table describes the operations that you must perform before you can use the created cloud disks.

Scenario

What to do next

You set the Attach parameter to Attach to ECS Instance when you create the cloud disks.

Perform the following operations to initialize the cloud disks:

If the disks are larger than 2 TiB in size, perform the operations that are described in Initialize a data disk whose size exceeds 2 TiB.
If the disks are smaller than or equal to 2 TiB in size, perform the operations that are described in Initialize a data disk whose size does not exceed 2 TiB on a Linux instance or Initialize a data disk whose size does not exceed 2 TiB on a Windows instance.

You set the Attach parameter to Not Attach when you create the cloud disks.

Attach and initialize the disks. For more information, see Attach a data disk.