Build a Free-Tier Image Pipeline with Alibaba Cloud OSS + CDN

Description and use

Create an OSS bucket, upload images via SDK, attach a CDN, and configure caching and image processing. This reduces server load and costs.

Managing uploaded images on an app server leads to disk bloat, high bandwidth costs, and backup challenges.

The pipeline reduces server load, scales automatically, and keeps costs low by leveraging OSS storage and CDN caching.

Create an OSS bucket with private access and public-read pattern
Upload images via the Python OSS SDK from the backend or use STS for client-side uploads
Set up a CDN domain pointing to the OSS bucket as origin
Enable OSS image processing for on-the-fly transformations
Configure CDN cache TTL (e.g., 7 days)
Implement server-side upload validation (size, MIME, deduplication)
Set lifecycle rules to move old originals to cold storage
Log access for abuse detection

Object storage (OSS) is built for exactly this job: Pay per gigabyte stored and per request — no idle capacity

Create a CDN domain pointing at the OSS bucket as origin