Alibaba Cloud Cloud Parallel File System (CPFS) review
A specialized parallel file system for Linux-based HPC and intelligent-computing workloads.
Reviewed by iTechGuides Editors · Editorial team · Updated Oct 2026
Alibaba Cloud Cloud Parallel File System (CPFS) is a fully managed parallel file system for high-performance computing workloads. It provides a unified namespace for concurrent access by hundreds or thousands of machines, with high throughput, high IOPS, and low latency. General-purpose deployments support POSIX and NFS v3 access, while CPFS for Lingjun targets intelligent-computing workloads. It fits AI training, autonomous driving, genomics, media rendering, EDA simulation, oil and gas exploration, and meteorological analysis teams that need shared parallel file storage.
Pricing is paid and billed against provisioned capacity. The CPFS General-purpose Edition with a 100 MB/s/TiB baseline is listed at $0.124 per GiB per month. The 200 MB/s/TiB baseline is listed at $0.209 per GiB per month. CPFS for Lingjun, with a 400 MB/s/TiB baseline, is listed at $0.317 per GiB per month and is designed for intelligent-computing workloads. The plans include pay-as-you-go and provisioned-capacity billing options, while billing is based on provisioned capacity. Prices vary by region, and final pricing is shown during purchase.
Its ecosystem fit is strongest inside Alibaba Cloud. CPFS integrates with Object Storage Service through Dataflow, Cloud Backup for incremental backup and restore, ECS, and Alibaba Cloud APIs and SDKs. ACL-based access control, server-side encryption, and encryption in transit support controlled data handling. Elastic scale-out is available, but capacity scaling is manual, and the listed platform coverage is Linux and API. Choose CPFS when POSIX or NFS v3 access, parallel throughput, and Alibaba Cloud integration are central requirements. Teams seeking a free tier, broad desktop coverage, or automatic capacity scaling should consider a different storage model.
Alibaba Cloud Cloud Parallel File System (CPFS) pros and cons
- Where it wins
- POSIX and NFS v3 interoperability for general-purpose deployments
- Unified namespace for concurrent access by many machines
- OSS, Cloud Backup, ACLs, and encryption integrations
- Where it doesn't
- No free plan; pricing is based on provisioned capacity
- Listed platform coverage is Linux and API
- Capacity scaling is manual rather than automatic
Alibaba Cloud Cloud Parallel File System (CPFS) fact sheet, pricing and score →
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