Help Center/ GeminiDB/ GeminiDB DynamoDB-Compatible API/ Working with GeminiDB DynamoDB-Compatible API/ Instance Modifications/ Scaling Storage Space/ Manually Scaling Up Storage of a GeminiDB DynamoDB-Compatible Instance
Updated on 2026-06-16 GMT+08:00
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Manually Scaling Up Storage of a GeminiDB DynamoDB-Compatible Instance

Scenarios

As application data grows, the instance may reach its storage capacity limit, causing write failures or service interruptions. To maintain business continuity, scale up the instance storage capacity before the limit is reached.

Usage Notes

  • To keep services accessible, scale up storage space when the storage usage exceeds 80%.
  • You do not need to restart the instance while scaling its storage. The change has no impact on existing data, services, or your databases.
  • If your yearly/monthly instance with classic storage is running out of storage, additional usage will be billed on a pay-per-use basis. To avoid these extra costs and maintain the benefits of your yearly/monthly subscription, you are advised to scale up storage.

Billing

During the scale-up, you are billed for the original storage capacity. Once the scale-up is complete, billing switches to the new storage capacity.

Table 1 Billing

Billing Mode

Operation

Impact on Price

Yearly/Monthly

Storage scale-up

You will be charged the price difference based on the remaining subscription period.

Example (The specifications and prices below are for reference only. The actual prices are displayed on the console.)

Assume that you purchased a yearly/monthly DynamoDB-Compatible instance with 40 GB of storage for one month on April 8, 2023, at a unit storage price of $1 USD/GB/month. On April 18, 2023, you added 40 GB of storage, bringing the total to 80 GB. The price difference is calculated as follows:

Scale-up price = Added storage × Unit price × Remaining period

The remaining period in the formula is calculated by dividing remaining days in each calendar month by the total days in that month. In this example, the remaining period is 0.6581 [12 (remaining days in April)/30 (total days in April) + 8 (remaining days in May)/31 (total days in May)]. The scale-up price is therefore $26.3 USD (40 × 1 × 0.6581).

For details, see Yearly/Monthly Billing.

Pay-per-use

Storage scale-up

After storage is scaled up, a new order is generated and you will be billed at the new price. The old order is automatically invalidated.

For details, see Pay-per-use Billing.

About Read-Only Instances

To maintain instance stability, the system checks its storage every 10 seconds. If your GeminiDB DynamoDB-Compatible instance is running out of storage, it will become read-only and its data cannot be modified. If this happens, you can scale up the storage to restore the instance status.

Table 2 describes the read-only status of instances with cloud native storage.
Table 2 Read-only status of instances with cloud native storage

Storage

Description

< 16,000 GB
  • When the storage usage reaches 97%, the instance becomes read-only.
  • When the storage usage decreases to 85%, the instance exits the read-only mode.

≥ 16,000 GB
  • If the remaining storage is less than 480 GB, the instance becomes read-only.
  • When the remaining storage is greater than or equal to 2400 GB, the instance exits the read-only mode.

Instances with classic storage do not support read-only mode.

Procedure

  1. Log in to the Huawei Cloud console.
  2. On the Instances page, locate the target instance and choose More > Scale Storage Space in the Operation column.

    Click the instance name. In the Storage Space area on the Basic Information page, click Scale.

  3. On the displayed page, specify new storage and click Next.

    Figure 1 Scaling up storage space
    • To scale up classic storage, you need to add at least 1 GB each time. The value must be an integer.
    • To scale up cloud native storage, you need to add at least 10 GB each time. The value must be an integer multiple of 10.

  4. On the displayed page, confirm the storage space.

    • Yearly/Monthly
      • If you need to modify your settings, click Previous.
      • If you do not need to modify your settings, click Next and complete the payment.
    • Pay-per-use
      • If you need to modify your settings, click Previous.
      • If you do not need to modify your settings, click Submit.

  5. Check the results.

    • When the scaling task is ongoing, the instance status is Scaling storage space.
    • After the scaling process, the instance status becomes Available.
    • Click the instance name. In the Storage Space area on the Basic Information page, check the new storage space.

Parent Topic: Scaling Storage Space