Welcome to Elastic Compute Service (ECS). Follow this guide to begin exploring and using this service.
Understand ECS
ECS offers resources and network architecture comparable to physical machines in a local data center.
Region: The physical location of the ECS deployment. Generally, the closer the location of your users is to the ECS instance, the lower the network latency and the faster the access speed. For more information, see Regions and zones.
Virtual private cloud (VPC): A private network environment on the cloud for ECS. It ensures isolation between different VPCs and direct communication within the same VPC. For more information, see VPCs and vSwitches.
vSwitch: An essential network device within a VPC. For more information, see VPCs and vSwitches.
Instance type: Defines the ECS specifications, including CPU model, core count, and memory size, such as 2 vCPU and 4 GiB memory. To explore available instance families, see Overview of instance families.
Image: The operating system and its version on an ECS instance. Examples include Alibaba Cloud Linux 3.2104 LTS 64-bit and Windows Server 2022 Datacenter 64-bit. For more information, see Image overview.
Storage: Includes system and data disks for storing system images and business data. For more information, see Overview of Block Storage.
Public IP address: Allows ECS to communicate with the Internet.
Security group: A virtual firewall that manages ECS instance traffic. For more information, see Security group overview.
Key pair: Security credentials used for ECS instance authentication. For more information, see SSH key pair overview.
ECS billing methods
Select the billing method that best fits your needs. The main options are pay-as-you-go and subscription. You can also choose preemptible instances based on your business needs. For more information, see Billing overview.
Billing method | Description |
This billing method charges you for the actual ECS resources used, payable after use. To stop billing, you must manually release the ECS resources. Pay-as-you-go is well-suited for services and applications with fluctuating traffic, such as interim scaling or testing needs. | |
Subscription requires you to pay for resources before you use them. If an ECS instance is not renewed post-expiration, the instance and its data will be deleted after 15 days. Subscription is suitable for services that operate continuously, such as web services, which are active 24/7. Payment for subscription resources is required in advance of their use. | |
Preemptible instances are unused ECS capacity in Alibaba Cloud. Compared with pay-as-you-go instances, discounts are offered for preemptible instances. However, these instances may be reclaimed by Alibaba Cloud on short notice, meaning you will lose your access to them. Preemptible instances are suitable for stateless scenarios such as scalable web services, image rendering, big data analytics, and large-scale parallel computing. |
Create and use ECS
Choose the method that best suits your needs to create and start using ECS.
Method | Intended user |
Create an instance on the Custom Launch tab in the ECS console and manage the instance | Best for users who prefer a web interface and want to select specific configurations when purchasing ECS instances. |
Recommended for users who want to create and manage ECS instances through programming. | |
Ideal for users who prefer command line tools for creating and managing ECS instances. | |
Recommended for users who want to create and manage ECS instances through Terraform. Note Terraform is a tool of Infrastructure as Code (IaC). Developers and O&M teams can use it to automatically create and manage ECS resources. |
Learn more
Enhance your understanding of ECS with the following resources:
To select the right instance type, consider performance, cost, and workload requirements. For more information, see Instance type selection.
Learn about the various methods and tools to connect to ECS instances. For details, see Connect to an instance.
Understand the lifecycle of instances, including how to start, restart, and release them. For more information, see Instance lifecycle.
We recommend that you immediately back up data after creating ECS instances by taking snapshots of the disks to prevent data loss. For more information, see Snapshot overview.