What is the primary use of Alibaba Cloud's API Gateway?

The primary use of Alibaba Cloud's API Gateway is indeed to manage, secure, and monitor API traffic. This tool serves as a crucial layer that acts as a facade for backend services, allowing businesses to expose their APIs to developers while ensuring the security and stability of their applications.

The API Gateway handles several important functions: it provides authentication and authorization mechanisms to protect sensitive data, facilitates traffic management by allowing rate limiting and throttling, and monitors the performance and usage of APIs. By centralizing these functionalities, the API Gateway enables developers to focus on building applications without worrying about the underlying complexities of traffic management or security.

The other options do not accurately capture the essence of the API Gateway's primary role, as they pertain to different services within Alibaba Cloud's ecosystem. Data storage management pertains to services like Object Storage Service (OSS), virtual server hosting is associated with Elastic Compute Service (ECS), and high-speed content delivery usually relates to Alibaba Cloud’s Content Delivery Network (CDN). Each of these services addresses distinct needs and functionalities that are separate from what the API Gateway provides.