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Community Blog How to Create a Virtual Private Cloud Server on Windows

How to Create a Virtual Private Cloud Server on Windows

Sometimes a server had just one logical drive, which held both the operating system and data. In this article, you will get some information on how to create a cloud server on Windows system.

When you're setting up a new cloud server, whether running Windows, Linux or something else, it's important to keep the OS on its own drive. While many people have tended to create Windows installations, especially on desktops, with just a single C: drive, it really makes sense to have at least two drives. This allows you to manage, resize and back up each drive independently.

To follow this tutorial, you'll need an Alibaba Cloud account. You'll also need to set up a billing method, and to create a VPC (virtual private cloud) and vSwitch (virtual switch). The VPC and vSwitch act as your private cloud-based LAN, and thus as a container for the cloud servers that you create.

Now you can get SSD cloud server packages, ideal for all enterprise application requirements, with a massive free data transfer at an unbeatable price on Alibaba Cloud. For details, you can go to New SSD Cloud Server Packages Now Available.

  1. Log into your Alibaba Cloud account.
  2. Management console ---> main products menu ---> Elastic Compute Service. On the left-hand side of the screen, choose Instances, and then select a region from the list at the top of the screen.
  3. Click on the blue Create Instance button.
  4. Choose the Pay-As-You-Go billing method.
  5. Under Instance Type, leave the default option set. This will be a server with 8GB of RAM and two CPUs, which is sufficient for our purposes.
  6. In the Image section, choose the Public Image button and then, from the dropdown boxes, choose Windows Server 2016.
  7. Check the all-important storage section.
  8. Click on the Next – Networking button and assign your server to a VPC and vSwitch.
  9. Click the orange Preview button and you'll see a summary of your chosen options. Note the optional Automatic Release settings. If you won't be using this server for long, you can schedule its automatic removal for a specific date and time, after which it will be deleted and you will no longer incur any charges.
  10. Accept the terms of service then click on Create Instance.
  11. Wait until the console display will show that your instance is up and running.
  12. Set the Administrator password for this instance: More menu ---> Password/Key Pair ---> Reset Password.
  13. Restart the instance to get the new password to take effect: More menu ---> Instance Status ---> Restart
  14. Wait until your instance will be shown as Running. Then you can see the storage situation on the left-hand side of the console screen.
  15. Click on the Instances link on the left-hand side of the screen and then click the blue Connect link for the server. (Connecting to a server from the browser-based console is simpler than connecting via a Remote Desktop tool, and avoids the need to create a security group in order to open the Remote Desktop firewall port 3389. The first time you use the Connect link, you'll be shown the VNC password for the server. Make a careful note of it, as it will not be shown again.)
  16. Enter the VNC password and you should see the server lock screen which is asking you to press Ctrl-Alt-Delete to unlock it.
  17. Choose the option at the top of the screen to send these keystrokes to the server, then log in using the administrator password you set. Then you can use Windows File Explorer, or any other means, to create some content on the data disk.

For how to delete the server and allocated its data drive to an entirely different instance running a different version of Windows Server, how to resize a cloud disk, and how to monitor its performance, please go to Managing Windows Server Drives on Alibaba Cloud.

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How to Install and Configure the Windows Server Failover Clustering on an ECS Instance

In this tutorial, we will show you how to prepare your remote cloud and deploy Windows Server Failover Clustering on an Alibaba Cloud ECS Instance.

We recommend you use Windows Server Failover Clustering (WSFC) and SQL Server AlwaysOn Availability Groups as your SQL Server high availability solution on Alibaba Cloud's ECS (Elastic Compute Service) Instances.

WSFC is a feature of the Windows Server platform, which is generally used to improve the high availability of applications and services on your network. WSFC is a successor to the Microsoft Cluster Service (MCS).

We recommend the following hardware to deploy this solution:

  1. ECS: 4-core CPU or above with 16GB of memory, or above.
  2. Mount SSD cloud disks as ECS.

We also recommend the following software with the listed specifications:

  1. .NET Framework 4.0 or above
  2. Powershell 5.0 or above
  3. Windows Server 2016 64-bit Data Center Edition
  4. SQL Server 2016 64-bit Enterprise Edition

How to Install and Configure SQL Server AlwaysOn on an ECS Instance

In this tutorial, we will show you how to prepare the SQL Server AlwaysOn environment and create a SQL Server AlwaysOn availability group on an Alibaba Cloud Elastic Compute Service (ECS) instance.

We recommend you use Windows Server Failover Clustering (WSFC) and SQL Server AlwaysOn Availability Groups as your SQL Server high availability solution on Alibaba Cloud's ECS Instances.

SQL Server is an open-source relational database management system (RDBMS). Its primary function is to store and retrieve data when required by other applications. It runs on various operating systems, such as Linux, UNIX, and Windows and across a wide range of applications.

The SQL Server AlwaysOn feature was made available in the SQL Server 2012 release. The AlwaysOn availability group boasts a high-availability disaster recovery solution. It replaces enterprise-level database image solutions to maximize the availability of a set of user databases for the enterprise. This feature sparked a revolutionary change in the industry.

The solution implements multiple readable copies as well as convenient read and write separation schemes. It outperforms Database Mirroring + Replication for achieving read and write separation with respect to availability and reliability. Several features may have restrictions in versions earlier than SQL Server 2016. However, following the release of the 2016 version, SQL Server became more user-friendly and compliant with the “customer first” principle. For example, you can now achieve no-domain-control deployment and enjoy as many as nine available copies.

Related Documenation

Connect to a Windows Server by using RDP

This article will describe how to connect to a Windows-based simple Application Server by using the Windows remote desktop connection.

Format a data disk for Windows instances

If data disks are selected when you create a Windows instance, you need to partition and format them for use.

This article describes how to create a single-partition data disk using a new data disk and how to mount a file system. You can also configure multiple partitions based on business needs. This article applies only to data disks that are not larger than 2 TiB.

Related Products

Elastic Compute Service

An online computing service that offers elastic and secure virtual cloud servers to cater all your cloud hosting needs.

Deploy ECS instances with just a few clicks from the easy-to-use console and scale capacity up or down based on real-time demands. This means you only pay for the resources you use and avoid the need to procure expensive IT infrastructure and hire large network teams.

Virtual Private Cloud

A virtual private cloud service that provides an isolated cloud network to operate resources in a secure environment.

Related Course

Operate and Manage a Cloud Server

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