The lifecycle management feature of Alibaba Cloud File Storage NAS helps you reduce storage costs. It automatically transitions infrequently accessed files, or cold data, from the Standard storage class to the lower-cost Infrequent Access (IA) or Archive storage classes. This topic describes lifecycle policies, limits, common scenarios, benefits, and the workflow.
Lifecycle policies
You can configure lifecycle policies based on rules that use the last access time. These policies periodically transition cold data from the Standard storage class of a General-purpose NAS file system to the IA or Archive storage class.
IA storage class: This class is suitable for data that is accessed infrequently, such as one to three times per month. It supports transitioning data after it has not been accessed for 14, 30, 60, or 90 days.
Archive Storage: This class is suitable for long-term data preservation, such as data that is accessed once or twice per quarter. Common scenarios include data auditing and data archiving. It supports transitioning data after it has not been accessed for 14, 30, 60, 90, or 180 days.
For more information about the IA and Archive storage classes, see Storage classes.
Lifecycle policy execution priority
If a file or folder matches multiple lifecycle policies scheduled for the same time, NAS executes the policy that results in the lowest cost.
Limits
Lifecycle management is not supported for General-purpose NAS file systems that have data encryption enabled.
Lifecycle management is not supported for Extreme NAS file systems.
You cannot directly purchase or write data to the IA or Archive storage classes. You must first purchase a General-purpose NAS file system and then use the lifecycle management feature. For more information, see Create a General-purpose NAS file system in the console and Create a lifecycle policy.
Lifecycle policies only transition files that are between 64 KiB and 4.88 TiB in size. Files outside this range are not transitioned to the IA or Archive storage class.
The minimum storage duration for Archive Storage is 60 days. If a file is stored in the Archive storage class for less than 60 days, you are charged for the remaining duration. For more information, see Billing for General-purpose NAS.
The time required for a data transition depends on the file system size and the amount of data to be transitioned. After you enable this feature, the first transition of files that match the lifecycle policy is completed in as little as 2 hours and typically within 24 hours. Subsequent periodic transitions are completed within one week. You can check the storage usage of the IA or Archive storage class on the file system details page. You can also view files that have been transitioned to the IA or Archive storage class in the NAS console. For more information, see View files in the IA or Archive storage class.
You can configure both an IA storage rule and an Archive storage rule for the same file or folder. If you configure both, the number of days specified in the IA storage rule must be less than the number of days specified in the Archive storage rule.
Benefits
Simple configuration without scripts or manual data migration
You can simply set a lifecycle policy, and the file system automatically transitions data that matches the policy to the IA or Archive storage class. This eliminates the need for complex and high-risk data migration operations.
File-level transition of cold data to maximize savings
The file system automatically identifies your cold data based on the lifecycle policy and promptly transitions every matching file. Compared to coarse-grained, folder-based archiving, this precise, file-level transition minimizes your storage costs. To frequently access files in the IA or Archive storage class, File Storage NAS supports data retrieval for specific files or folders. This helps you avoid high read and write fees that result from frequent access.
Low cost for high-quality, worry-free storage
For example, after you enable the IA storage class for a Performance NAS file system, you can save up to 92% on storage costs compared to the original Performance NAS file system.
NoteThe unit price for a Performance NAS file system is 1.85 CNY/GiB/month. The unit price for the IA storage class is 0.15 CNY/GiB/month. The unit price for the Archive storage class is 0.05 CNY/GiB/month. For more information, see File Storage NAS Pricing.
Statistical analysis shows that about 80% of the data in most file systems is cold data. Based on the 80/20 rule, using the IA storage class can reduce the effective storage cost to 0.49 CNY/GiB/month for Performance NAS, 0.29 CNY/GiB/month for Premium NAS, and 0.19 CNY/GiB/month for General-purpose capacity.
Cold data can be accessed directly and does not require manual restoration or application modification.
After cold data is transitioned, the content and structure of the file system remain unchanged, allowing your applications to access the cold data without any modifications or business interruptions.
Cost savings plan
Deciding whether to enable lifecycle management
Before you enable lifecycle management, you can estimate the service fees for a hypothetical scenario. This helps you decide whether to transition files to the IA or Archive storage class.
Storage cost savings from storing all data in the IA or Archive storage class (Cost A) | Data transfer fees for reading and writing data in the IA or Archive storage class (Cost B) |
(Unit price of General-purpose NAS - Unit price of IA or Archive storage) × Estimated storage capacity
| Unit price of data transfer × Estimated read/write volume
|
Compare Cost A and Cost B using the preceding formulas. The conclusions are as follows:
| |
Example:
In August 2021, a user created a storage-optimized file system in the China (Hangzhou) region. The estimated monthly data volume for IA storage is 1 PiB, and the estimated monthly read/write data volume is 5,000 GiB.
Storage cost savings from storing all data in the IA storage class (A) | Data transfer fees for reading and writing all data in the IA storage class (B) |
(Unit price of General-purpose NAS - Unit price of IA storage) × Estimated storage capacity (0.35 - 0.15) (CNY/GiB/month) × 1 (PiB) × 1024 × 1024 = 209,715.2 (CNY) | Unit price of data transfer × Estimated read/write volume 0.06 (CNY/GiB/month) × 5,000 (GiB) = 300 (CNY) |
The calculation shows that A > B. Therefore, you should enable the lifecycle management feature to further reduce storage costs.
Cost savings example
Typically, after you enable a lifecycle policy, you can save up to 92% on storage costs by transitioning data to the IA storage class. You can save up to 97% by transitioning data to the Archive storage class.
Assume User A creates a Performance NAS file system in the China (Hangzhou) region and stores 1 PiB of data per month. The monthly costs are described as follows:
The unit prices in this example are from the detailed NAS pricing information published on the Alibaba Cloud official website on April 17, 2024. The unit prices of billable items may vary due to different statistical dates. For actual usage, refer to the information published on the File Storage NAS Pricing page.
This example only covers data transition and data read scenarios. If other NAS features are used, other corresponding billable items may be triggered. For more information, see Billing for General-purpose NAS.
Storage class | Total data volume | Storage fee1.85 (CNY/GiB/month) | Read traffic fee | Total fee |
Standard | 1 PiB | 1,939,865.6 | Not applicable | 1,939,865.6 |
After a lifecycle policy is enabled to transition all data to the IA or Archive storage class, the user's monthly costs for different data access ratios are as follows:
Storage Class | Total storage | Storage fee IA: 0.15 (CNY/GiB/month) Archive: 0.05 (CNY/GiB/month) | Data access ratio | Read traffic fee Infrequent Access: 0.06 (CNY/GiB/month) Archive: 0.1 (CNY/GiB/month) | Total fee |
IA storage class | 1 PiB | 157,286.4 | 10% | 6,291.456 | 163,577.856 |
50% | 31,457.28 | 188,743.68 | |||
80% | 50,331.648 | 207,618.048 | |||
Archive Storage | 1 PiB | 52,428.8 | 10% | 10,485.76 | 62,914.56 |
50% | 52,428.8 | 104,857.6 | |||
80% | 83,886.08 | 136,314.88 |
The preceding tables show the following:
Using the IA storage class can save approximately 89% to 92% of costs compared to the Standard storage class.
Using the Archive storage class can save approximately 93% to 97% of costs compared to the Standard storage class.
Workflow
The workflow for transitioning, accessing, and retrieving cold data in a file system is as follows:
A user creates a lifecycle policy based on the data usage in the file system. For more information, see Set a lifecycle policy.
The lifecycle management module periodically checks the specified folder for cold data based on the policy. It then transitions cold data from the Standard storage class to the IA or Archive storage class, or from the IA storage class to the Archive storage class (① in the figure).
When a user accesses cold data in the IA or Archive storage class, the file system caches the data in the Standard storage class of the General-purpose NAS file system to enable access (② in the figure). Accessing the data does not change its storage class. The first access to cold data has slightly higher latency. Subsequent access performance is the same as accessing data in the Standard storage class. Accessing cold data in the IA or Archive storage class incurs data transfer fees. For more information, see Billing for General-purpose NAS.
To frequently access data in the IA or Archive storage class, you can create a data retrieval task to retrieve the data from a specified file or folder to the Standard storage class (③ in the figure). Executing a data retrieval task reads the target data and incurs read traffic fees. For more information, see Create a data retrieval task and Billing for General-purpose NAS.
Billing description
When you use a lifecycle policy to transition cold data from the Standard storage class of a General-purpose NAS file system to the IA or Archive storage class, NAS charges storage fees based on the storage class, size, and duration of your files. It also charges data transfer fees for read and write access. For more information, see Billing for General-purpose NAS.
IA storage class fees
IA storage capacity fee: You are charged a Storage Usage of IA Storage Class fee based on the size and storage duration of the files that you transition to the IA storage class.
IA storage read/write traffic fee: You are billed based on the cumulative read and write traffic for accessing data in the IA storage class per hour. This fee applies to both internal network and public network traffic.
Archive storage class fees
Archive storage capacity fee: You are charged a Storage Usage of Archive Storage Class fee based on the size and storage duration of the files that you transition to the Archive storage class.
Fee for storage duration less than the minimum requirement: If a file is stored for less than 60 days (1,440 hours) before it is deleted, retrieved, or reduced in size, you are charged a storage fee for the remaining time (1,440 - actual storage hours) based on the original size of the archived object. The fee for storage duration of less than 60 days is charged only once within a 24-hour period.
NoteThe minimum storage duration is calculated starting from the file's modification time (mtime). If an archived object is modified, the 60-day timer resets.
Archive storage read/write traffic fee: You are billed based on the cumulative read and write traffic for accessing data in the Archive storage class per hour. This fee applies to both internal network and public network traffic.