OSS FAQs
General FAQs
What is AliCloud OSS? AliCloud Object Storage Service (OSS) is a massive, secure, low-cost, and highly persistent cloud storage service provided by AliCloud, and can be expanded indefinitely. Its data design durability is not less than 99.9999999999% (12 nines), and service availability (or business continuity) is not less than 99.995%. What can OSS do? OSS has a platform independent RESTful API interface. You can store and access any type of data in any application, at any time, and anywhere. Because OSS is highly scalable and you only need to pay for the actual usage, you can start with a small amount of usage and expand according to business needs without affecting performance and durability. You can easily move massive data into or out of AliCloud OSS using the API, SDK package or OSS migration tool provided by AliCloud. After data is stored in AliCloud OSS, you can choose Standard storage as the main storage method for mobile applications, large websites, picture sharing, or hot audio and video. You can also choose Low Frequency Access, Archive, Cold Archive with lower cost and longer storage life Or deep cold archive is used as a storage method for infrequently accessed data. For more information about OSS functions, see OSS function overview 。 Who is OSS suitable for? OSS is suitable for webmasters of communities, multimedia sharing, e-commerce and other forms and scales, app application and software application developers, game development enterprises and users with large-scale data storage needs. Internet audio, video, and picture applications: such as short video storage, live video recording, video on demand, picture social networking, pictures, and video albums. You can use the rich RESTful APIs provided by OSS to achieve massive distributed data storage solutions. Education industry: K12, online English and other online education stores data to OSS, and combines OSS transmission acceleration or CDN acceleration products to achieve mass data storage and content distribution solutions. AI/Internet of Things: automatic driving, Internet of Things and other scenarios. Automatic driving collects and migrates the collected training data to OSS through Lightning Cube. In scenarios such as home video monitoring or social video monitoring of the Internet of Things, video data collected by cameras can be directly uploaded to OSS, which not only allows real-time video viewing on the APP, but also allows for hot and cold layering of stored data according to the life cycle to achieve cost reduction+compliance requirements. Film and television rendering industry: data storage of film and television production, media management materials, etc., to help customers provide highly flexible, massive data storage space; At the same time, the solution of storage+data intelligent processing can be realized by combining IMM (intelligent media processing product). Gene industry: the data storage requirements of upstream and downstream businesses such as gene sequencing, delivery and diagnosis, combined with the powerful computing power on the cloud, can realize the big data storage+computing+analysis scheme.
What is OSS suitable for storing? OSS is suitable for storing attachments, high-definition pictures, audio and video, backup files, etc. in forum websites and software applications, as well as files from various app applications, multi terminal synchronization software, and online disk download stations. What problems can developers solve with OSS that cannot be solved with local solutions? OSS allows any developer to take full advantage of Alibaba Cloud's scale without the need for early investment or performance impact. Developers can be freed to focus on innovation without worrying about performance bottlenecks and security problems caused by business growth. OSS is not only low-cost, but also very simple to operate. Is there an upper limit on how much data OSS can store? There is no limit to the total storage capacity of OSS and the capacity of a single bucket. Only files smaller than 5 GB can be uploaded through the OSS console. For files larger than 5 GB, you need to use Fragment upload Function, or use Graphical tool ossbrowser 、 Command line tool ossutil Upload directly. What storage types does OSS provide? OSS provides a variety of storage types, including standard, low-frequency access, archiving, cold archiving, and deep cold archiving, covering all data storage scenarios from hot to cold. For more information, see Storage Type Overview 。 How to select an OSS storage type? The five storage types of OSS differ in measurement size, storage duration, unfreezing time, and data retrieval. You can choose to store data in different storage types according to data access frequency and application scenarios, so as to reduce storage costs. For example, 70% of your data will not be accessed for more than 30 days, so this part of data can be called colder data. It is recommended that you store this cold data in low-frequency or archive type to reduce costs. At the same time, you can also set life cycle management rules for your stored data. OSS will automatically convert colder data to low-frequency or archived storage types according to the rules set by the customer. The colder the data, the lower the cost of storage. It should be noted that if you need to read the data stored in the archive or cold archive, you need to wait for minutes or even hours of unfreezing time, but cannot read it in real time. At the same time, OSS will also charge additional unfreezing fees. Will AliCloud use the data I store on OSS? With respect to user business data, Alibaba Cloud does not make any unauthorized use or disclosure except to comply with your service requirements or legal and regulatory requirements. For more information, see Terms of Service 。 Will AliCloud store its data on OSS? yes. Alibaba Cloud internal developers also use OSS as the authorized data store in many projects. These projects rely on OSS to perform key business operations. If the traffic from applications suddenly surges, how can OSS ensure the availability of services? From the beginning, OSS has designed to handle high traffic from any Internet application. It provides a volume based pricing policy and unlimited capacity to ensure that your service will not be interrupted due to traffic surges. OSS can distribute the load evenly, and no application will be affected by the peak traffic. How is OSS data organized? OSS is a distributed object storage service that provides an object storage service in the form of Key Value. When you store a file (object), you need to specify the name (key) of the object. Later, you will use this key to obtain the content of the object. The Key can also be used to simulate some properties of a folder. The concept of folder in OSS is only a logical concept. When setting a folder through API or SDK, you can specify the key value corresponding to the object, including the previous directory, to simulate the folder function. For example, define the key of the object as dir/example.jpg , a bucket named dir And create a folder named example.jpg File. If the user deleted dir/example.jpg , will no longer exist dir This folder. What are the intelligent features of OSS? OSS seamlessly integrates many computing frameworks, including Hadoop Spark、MaxCompute、BatchCompute、 High performance computing (HPC), EMR, etc. In addition, to reduce the complexity of user operations, OSS provides easy-to-use SaaS services, including image processing, content detection, etc. In addition, OSS also provides intelligent media management functions, which can quickly integrate various intelligent media processing algorithms, thus greatly improving the efficiency of media content management and distribution. How do I start using OSS? Before using AliCloud OSS services, please ensure that you have registered an AliCloud account and completed real name authentication. See Register an AliCloud account and Personal real name authentication 。 After you register an AliCloud account, you need to activate the OSS service. See Open OSS service 。 Optional: After the OSS service is enabled, the default billing method is pay as you go. If you want to further reduce OSS costs, we recommend that you purchase OSS resource packs. See Resource Pack Purchase Guide 。 You can use OSS through the console, graphical management tools, command line management tools, and SDKs in various languages. See Start using OSS 。
What qualifications and certifications does OSS have? Alibaba Cloud has almost achieved a "full slam" in the field of compliance. Alibaba Cloud is basically the first to be recognized for important overseas compliance certification in Asia, Europe and other places, as well as important assessment and security review in China. Among them, ISO 22301，CSA STAR Gold， Germany's C5 rider is the first in the world, and Germany's C5 and ISO27001 are the first in Asia Pacific. MTCS Level3 and ISO20000 are the first in China. Alibaba Cloud is also the first cloud computing security service provider (2012) that BSI approved for ISO27001 in China. Currently, AliCloud OSS has met the compliance requirements of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA). At present, Alibaba Cloud is another cloud vendor after AWS, Azure, GCP and IBM, and also the first cloud vendor in China to pass the audit certification of Cohasset Associates Ins. For details, see Compliance certification 。 Why unfreeze design data? In data management, it is often faced with data that needs long-term storage but is rarely accessed, that is, cold data. Through its underlying technical capabilities, OSS enables cold data to be stored at a very low cost, and can be restored to an accessible state when needed. This is called data unfreezing. By sacrificing the convenience of real-time access in exchange for significantly reduced storage costs, the ultimate cost optimization is achieved.
AliCloud region
Where is my data stored? When creating OSS storage space, you can specify an AliCloud region. By default, OSS stores your data in a zone (AZ) in a specified region. If you enable local redundant storage, OSS will The data redundancy storage mechanism in multiple zones (AZ) is adopted to store the user's data redundancy in multiple zones in the same region. When an availability zone is unavailable, normal access to data can still be guaranteed. What is the AliCloud region? AliCloud region is a geographical location in which AliCloud provides multiple physically independent and isolated zones that are connected through networks with low latency, high throughput, and high redundancy. What is an availability zone (AZ)? An availability zone is a physical area where power and network are independent of each other in the same region. The network latency between instances in the same zone is smaller. In the same region, the intranet between zones can be interconnected, and fault isolation can be achieved between zones. How to determine which AliCloud region to store data in? When selecting a region, it is recommended that you consider the geographical location, the relationship between cloud products, resource prices and other factors comprehensively. For more information, see How to select an OSS region 。
charging
How much does OSS cost? With OSS, you can pay according to the actual usage (use first, pay later). There is no minimum fee limit. You can also purchase resource packages in advance, and deduct the corresponding amount when using resources later. Generally, resource packs are more favorable. For detailed price information, see OSS Product Pricing 。 How should I pay if other accounts access my OSS resources? When other accounts access your OSS resources, we will charge according to the normal OSS pricing. You can also choose to configure the storage space as the requester pays mode. In this mode, the requester will pay for requests and downloads of OSS data. See Enable requester payment mode 。 How do I close OSS? Considering that one click shutdown will affect the customer's business, OSS does not provide this function for the time being. You can use other alternatives to turn off OSS services or stop OSS billing. For more information, see How can I turn off OSS services or stop billing?
Data security and protection
Is data stored safely on OSS? OSS itself is very secure. After creation, only resource owners can access their OSS resources. OSS provides user authentication to control access to data. You can selectively grant permissions to users and user groups using various access control policies, such as access control lists (ACLs) at the storage space level and file level. The OSS console displays the storage space you can publicly access. You can set the storage space and files that you do not want to access publicly as private read/write. If you set the ACL of a private read/write storage space or file to public read/write, OSS will warn you. For more information about OSS security, see OSS Security and Compliance White Paper 。 How to control the access rights of data stored in OSS? For access to objects stored in buckets, OSS provides multiple permission control methods, including ACL, RAM Policy, and Bucket Policy. For more information, see Overview of Access Control 。 What data encryption methods does OSS provide? Server side encryption: When uploading files, OSS encrypts the received files, and then persists the encrypted files; When downloading a file, OSS automatically decrypts the encrypted file and returns it to the user. In the returned HTTP request header, it states that the file is encrypted on the server side. For more information, see Server side encryption 。 Client encryption: encrypt files locally before uploading them to OSS. For more information, see Client encryption 。 How to prevent bucket data from being deleted or overwritten by mistake? Version control is a bucket level data protection function. After version control is enabled, overwriting and deleting data will be saved in the form of historical versions. After you overwrite the error or delete the file (object), you can restore the object stored in the bucket to the historical version at any time. For more information, see Overview of version control 。 What is a compliant retention policy? OSS supports the WORM (Write Once Read Many) feature, allowing you to save and use data in a way that cannot be deleted or tampered with. Users can set time-based compliance retention policies for buckets. After the policy is locked, the user can upload and read objects in the bucket, but no user can delete objects and policies before the object's retention time expires. You can delete an object only after its retention time expires. When you need long-term storage and are not allowed to modify or delete important data, such as medical archives, technical documents, contract documents, etc., you can store such data in the designated bucket and protect your important data by enabling the compliance retention policy. Does OSS support online file modification? OSS does not support online modification of uploaded files. If you need to modify the file, you can first download the uploaded file to the local, and then upload it again after modification. Is OSS three copies? no OSS uses erasure coding (EC) instead of three copies. The erasure correcting code is no worse than the three copies in terms of performance and reliability. How is 99.995% availability calculated? The definition of OSS's availability SLA is different from that of instance products. Its service availability will be calculated by dividing the sum of error rates every five minutes in the service cycle by the total number of five minutes in the service cycle to calculate the average error rate every five minutes, as follows: Error rate per 5 minutes=failed requests per 5 minutes/total valid requests per 5 minutes x 100% Service availability=(1 - ∑ error rate every 5 minutes in the service cycle/total number of 5 minutes in the service cycle × 100%
For more information, see OSS service level agreement for object storage
Data replication
How to copy data from a bucket to buckets in different regions? When you want to save an exact copy of the data in a bucket in different regions, you can configure multiple cross region replication rules for the bucket. Cross region replication is an automatic, asynchronous (near real-time) replication of objects across buckets in different OSS data centers (regions). It copies the creation, update, and deletion of objects from the source storage space to the target storage space in different regions. What are the application scenarios for cross regional replication? -
Compliance requirements: Although OSS has multiple copies of each stored object on the physical disk by default, the data specified by the compliance requirements needs to be saved across a certain distance. Through cross regional replication, data can be replicated between OSS data centers over long distances to meet these compliance requirements. -
Minimize latency: customers are in two geographic locations. To minimize the delay in accessing objects, you can maintain object replicas in OSS data centers that are geographically close to users. -
Data backup and disaster recovery: You have very high requirements for data security and availability. For all written data, you want to explicitly maintain a copy in another data center in case of catastrophic disasters, such as earthquakes, tsunamis, etc., that damage one OSS data center and enable the backup data of another OSS data center. -
Data replication: Due to business reasons, data needs to be migrated from one OSS data center to another. -
Operation reason: You have a computing cluster analyzing the same group of objects in two different data centers. You can choose to maintain object replicas in two different regions.
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How is cross regional replication charged? After cross region replication is enabled, cross region data traffic will be generated when backing up files in the source bucket to the target bucket, and OSS will charge for cross region replication traffic. For each synchronized object, the OSS accumulates the number of requests and charges as you go. Currently, cross region replication traffic only supports metered billing, and does not provide resource packages.
Data query
Storage management
What is OSS lifecycle management? How to use life cycle management to help reduce OSS storage costs? Life cycle rules can regularly convert non popular data into low-frequency access, archive, cold archive or deep cold archive storage, and delete data that no longer need access, allowing you to manage your stored data more efficiently, saving a lot of labor and storage costs. For example: The medical archives of a medical institution need to be accessed occasionally within half a year after being uploaded to OSS, and will not be accessed after half a year. You can set the life cycle rules to convert the medical records uploaded for 180 days into archive storage. The recording file of a company's service hotline needs to be used as the basis for data statistics and verification within two months after it is uploaded to OSS. It will be accessed occasionally after two months, and will not be accessed after half a year. The data will no longer need to be stored after two years. You can set the life cycle rules to set the recording file to be converted to low-frequency access storage 60 days after uploading, archived storage 180 days later, and deleted 730 days later. A large number of files in a storage space need to be deleted, but manual deletion can only delete up to 1000 files at a time, which is troublesome. At this point, you can configure a life cycle rule that matches the entire bucket, and set to delete all files one day later. All data in this bucket will be deleted the next day.
For more information, see Life cycle rules based on the last modification time 。 How to obtain information about objects in a bucket on a regular basis? The OSS list function allows you to obtain the number, size, storage type, encryption status and other information of the specified objects in the bucket on a daily or weekly basis. For more information, see Storage space list 。
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