This topic describes the billing rules of File Storage NAS (NAS). General-purpose NAS file systems and Extreme NAS file systems are billed based on different billing standards.
Billing methods
Billing method | Description |
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Storage capacity units (SCUs) are subscription storage resource plans that can be used to offset the storage fees of various Alibaba Cloud storage services. | |
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When you purchase resource plans, you must specify a storage capacity and usage duration. Resource plans offer higher discounts than the pay-as-you-go billing method.
If the storage capacity of resource plans is used up, you are charged for the excess resource usage based on the pay-as-you-go billing method. We recommend that you purchase resource plans based on your workloads and business scale. For more information, see Purchase resource plans.
Billable items
NAS supports two types of file systems: General-purpose NAS file systems and Extreme NAS file systems. This section describes the billable items of NAS.
General-purpose NAS file systems
You are charged for General-purpose NAS file systems based on the storage class, data volume (peak value per hour), and retention period. If you enable the lifecycle management feature, you are charged for the storage usage, read traffic, and write traffic based on the storage class. For more information, see Lifecycle management overview.
The following figure shows the billable items of General-purpose NAS file systems. For more information, see Billing of General-purpose NAS file systems.
Extreme NAS file systems
You are charged for Extreme NAS file systems based on the storage class, provisioned capacity, and retention period. The following figure shows the billable items of Extreme NAS file systems. For more information, see Billing of Extreme NAS file systems.
When you use NAS file systems, you may be charged the following fees in addition to the billable items of NAS file systems.
File backup fees
NAS supports seamless integration with Cloud Backup. You can back up files in the NAS console at regular intervals. You can also restore files if data is lost or damaged. The first time you back up files in a NAS file system, you can create a free (30-day period) backup plan. When the trial period expires, you can renew or suspend the backup plan. For information about the billing of Cloud Backup, see Billing methods and billable items.
Snapshot fees
The snapshot feature is in public preview. Only advanced Extreme NAS file systems support the snapshot feature.
Public bandwidth fees
When you migrate data from a third-party storage system to a NAS file system or download data from a NAS file system to your local computer, you must mount the NAS file system on a Windows or Linux PC that is connected to the Internet. In this case, the public bandwidth of the ECS instance is occupied. You are charged for using the public bandwidth of the ECS instance. For more information, see Public bandwidth.
CEN fees
If you use Cloud Enterprise Network (CEN) to access NAS file systems in the same region, across regions, across virtual private clouds (VPCs), or across accounts, you are charged for using Enterprise Edition transit routers and bandwidth plans. For more information, see Billing rules .
NAT gateway fees
NAS does not support direct access over the Internet. However, you can use Network Address Translation (NAT) gateways to access NAS file systems from data centers. After you associate a NAT gateway with an elastic IP address (EIP), you can mount a NAS file system on a Windows or Linux PC that is connected to the Internet. If you use NAT gateways to access NAS file systems, you are charged for using the NAT gateways. For more information, see Billing of Internet NAT gateways and Billing of VPC NAT gateways.
VPN gateway fees
NAS does not support direct access over the Internet. However, you can use virtual private network (VPN) gateways to access NAS file systems from data centers. If you use VPN gateways to access NAS file systems, you are charged for using the VPN gateways. For more information, see Billing.
Log analysis fees of Simple Log Service
After a General-purpose Server Message Block (SMB) file system or a General-purpose Network File System (NFS) file system dumps logs to Simple Log Service, you are charged for data storage, read traffic, requests, data transformation, and data shipping. The charges are included into your Simple Log Service bills. For more information, see Billable items of pay-by-feature.
Pricing
For more information about the prices of NAS file systems, see File Storage NAS Pricing.
Billing cycle
NAS calculates all resource usage by hour and generates bills based on the actual usage. A bill is generated about 3 to 4 hours after each billing cycle. The time when bills are issued is determined by the system. For example, you are billed at 09:30:00 for the fees that are generated from 08:00:00 to 09:00:00 of the same day.
The bill that you receive at 09:30:00 may include only the fees that are generated from 05:30:00 to 06:30:00 because of system latency.
Billing formulas
You are charged fees by hour based on the actual storage usage. Fees are calculated based on the following formula: Fees = Actual storage usage (GiB) × Unit price per hour.
As stated on the File Storage NAS Pricing page, storage fees are calculated in USD per GiB-month. When you use the pay-as-you-go billing method, fees are calculated based on the following formula: Fees = Actual storage usage × Unit price per hour. Therefore, when you calculate storage fees charged based on the actual storage usage, you must convert GiB-month to GiB-hour by using the following formula: Unit price in GiB-hour = Unit price in USD per GiB-month/30/24. For example, the unit price for the storage of Capacity NAS file systems is USD 0.06 per GiB-month, and the unit price in GiB-hour is USD 0.000083333 per GiB-hour (0.06/30/24).
Billing FAQ
For information about how to troubleshoot the issues that occur when you purchase or use NAS, see Billing FAQ.