This topic describes the use scenarios of Object Storage Service (OSS).
Massive storage for image, audio, and video applications
OSS can be used to store large amounts of data, such as images, audio and video data, and logs. Various devices, websites, and mobile applications can directly write data to and read data from OSS. You can write data to OSS by uploading files or using streams.
Dynamic and static content separation for websites and mobile applications
You can concurrently download large amounts of data from OSS over the Internet by using a huge amount of bandwidth. OSS provides the transfer acceleration feature to accelerate uploads and downloads across countries and continents and improve user experience. For more information, see Enable transfer acceleration. You can use OSS together with Alibaba Cloud CDN to cache static data stored in OSS on Alibaba Cloud CDN points of presence (POPs). Users can access the data cached on POPs instead of the same data stored in OSS. This way, concurrent and repeated downloads of an object by users from the same region can be accelerated. For more information, see Access acceleration by using Alibaba Cloud CDN.
Data processing in the cloud
After you upload objects to OSS, you can use Intelligent Media Management (IMM) and Image Processing (IMG) to process the data in the cloud. For more information, see IMG.
Delivery of resource configuration changes to OSS for data archiving by using Cloud Config
To fully monitor your cloud resources, you can use Cloud Config to efficiently collect and store scheduled snapshots and configuration changes of various Alibaba Cloud resources, including Elastic Compute Service (ECS), Virtual Private Cloud (VPC), and ApsaraDB RDS, and deliver the data to a specific OSS bucket. If the size of a single file that you want to deliver to Simple Message Queue (SMQ) exceeds 64 KB or the size of a single file delivered to Simple Log Service exceeds 1 MB, you must deliver the file to a specific OSS bucket. This way, you can prevent data loss and make full use of the massive storage capacity and cost-effectiveness of OSS to store detailed audit information. For more information, see Delivery.
Delivery of events to OSS for data archiving by using ActionTrail
You can use ActionTrail to record and audit user operations on cloud resources. You can also create a trail to deliver events to a specific OSS bucket for long-term data storage. This meets the requirements of scenarios, such as security monitoring and assurance, compliance audit, resource change management, and fault diagnosis and O&M. For more information, see Create a single-account trail.
Storage of computing results
Use OSS together with Batch Compute
Batch Compute is a high-performance cloud service designed to process a large number of concurrent jobs. Batch Compute helps you easily manage and run tens of thousands of concurrent jobs. You need to only upload the computing jobs to Batch Compute. The system intelligently runs these jobs on multiple virtual machine (VM) instances of Alibaba Cloud concurrently. After the jobs are complete, the computing results are stored in OSS. OSS securely and reliably stores large amounts of raw data or intermediate computing results. OSS ensures the availability of data at any time due to its unlimited storage capacity and real-time data access.
Use OSS together with multiple cloud services, such as E-HPC
As a cloud-native distributed storage service, OSS provides solid data support for all types of data and applications. OSS plays a key role in meeting the high requirements for data management and storage in Elastic High Performance Computing (E-HPC) scenarios. E-HPC provides on-demand scaling of high-performance computing clusters, including compute nodes and GPU nodes, to run compute-intensive jobs. E-HPC is used in various scenarios, such as physical simulation, climate modeling, genomics analysis, and large-scale machine learning and training. These jobs generate and consume a large amount of data. As a cloud-native distributed storage service, OSS can be used to store a large amount of unstructured data, such as raw data and computing results. OSS allows you to import job data and executable files.
As the core carrier of computing resources, ECS instances are used to run various applications and services and support compute nodes in an E-HPC cluster. ECS instances use elastic IP addresses (EIPs) to provide static public IP addresses for ECS instances, which ensures service stability and availability. In order to build a secure and efficient running environment, a VPC is used to build a private network in the cloud to provide a secure and isolated network space for ECS, E-HPC, and other instances, which enhances the resource isolation and protection.
In addition, File Storage NAS (NAS) is used to further enhance the data sharing capabilities of clusters. As a centralized file storage service, NAS enables all compute nodes to seamlessly access shared files, which facilitates data sharing and collaboration among team members.
In conclusion, OSS combines multiple cloud services, such as E-HPC, to build a highly flexible, efficient, and secure cloud computing ecosystem, which meets the requirements of different scenarios, such as data storage, computing resource scheduling, network construction, and data sharing.
Storage and distribution of images
Elastic Desktop Service (EDS) is a cloud-based virtual computer service that allows you to remotely access and use a configured virtual desktop environment over the Internet. As a highly available and durable storage service, OSS can securely and reliably store your images. You can upload images to OSS as backups to prevent image loss due to unexpected circumstances and ensure business continuity. In addition, other users or team members can easily share the images and quickly deploy new EDS instances based on images, which improves work efficiency and maintains environment consistency.
Screen recording audit and archiving
EDS supports the screen recording audit feature, which allows you to record and monitor the usage of applications or users in EDS and ensure data security and compliance. After you configure a management policy for the screen recording audit feature, the generated screen recording files are automatically delivered to a specific OSS bucket. This way, you can back up and securely store these files in real time. You can also view, analyze, and audit these files, which improves management efficiency and data security.
