ECS Getting Started Guide-阿里云帮助中心

Welcome to Elastic Compute Service (ECS). Follow this guide to explore and use ECS.

Understand Elastic Compute Service

An ECS instance functions like a physical server in an on-premises data center and provides similar computing resources and network architecture.

Region: The geographic location where you deploy your ECS instance. Generally, the closer your physical location is to the region, 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 dedicated to your ECS instances in the cloud. VPCs are isolated from each other and cannot directly communicate. All ECS instances within the same VPC can communicate over the private network. For more information, see Virtual Private Cloud and vSwitches.
vSwitch: A basic networking device that forms part of a VPC. For more information, see Virtual Private Cloud and vSwitches.
Instance type: Specifies the CPU model, number of cores, and memory size of an ECS instance—for example, 2 vCPUs and 4 GiB of memory. For more information about available instance families, see Instance type classification and naming and Instance families.
Image: The operating system and version for your ECS instance—for example, Alibaba Cloud Linux 3.2104 LTS 64-bit or Windows Server 2022 Datacenter Edition 64-bit Chinese Edition. For more information, see Image overview.
Storage: Includes system disks and data disks for storing OS images and business data. For more information, see Elastic Block Storage overview.
Public IP address: Enables your ECS instance to communicate over the Internet.
Security group: A virtual firewall that controls inbound and outbound traffic for ECS instances. For more information, see Security group overview.
Key pair: A security credential used to verify your identity when you log on to an ECS instance. For more information, see SSH key pair overview.

Billing methods for ECS

You can choose a billing method based on your needs. The two primary billing methods are subscription and pay-as-you-go. You can also use spot instances, depending on your workload. For more information, see Billing overview.

Billing method	Description
Pay-as-you-go	You pay for actual usage after using the service. Release your ECS instance manually to stop billing when you no longer need it. This method suits applications or services with sudden traffic spikes, such as temporary scaling or testing.
Subscription	You pay upfront for a fixed period of resource usage. If you do not renew your subscription before expiration, your instance and its data will be deleted on the 15th day after expiration. This method suits stable 24/7 services, such as web servers. You must settle your subscription bill before using the resources.
Spot instance	You bid for spare compute capacity at a discounted rate compared to pay-as-you-go pricing, but your instance may be reclaimed. This method suits stateless workloads, such as scalable web services, rendering, data analytics, and parallel computing.

Free trial for new users

New ECS users who complete identity verification are eligible for a free three-month trial of ECS. If you meet all the following conditions, go to the Alibaba Cloud Free Trial Center to activate your free trial. For trial rules and details, see ECS free trial guide.

You have completed identity verification.
You have never purchased or tried ECS before.
Your account has no overdue payments.

Create and use an ECS instance

Choose the method that best fits your needs to create and use an ECS instance.

Method	Suitable for
Quickly purchase and use an ECS instance in the console	Users who prefer a graphical user interface (GUI) and want to bypass complex configuration steps to quickly get started with ECS.
Customize and purchase an ECS instance in the console	Users who prefer a GUI and want flexible configuration options when they purchase an ECS instance.
Create and use an ECS instance using an SDK	Users who want to programmatically create and manage ECS instances.
Create and use an ECS instance using the CLI	Users who prefer to use the command-line interface (CLI) to create and manage ECS instances.
Create and use an ECS instance using Terraform	Users who want to use Terraform to create and manage ECS instances. Note Terraform is an Infrastructure as Code (IaC) tool that helps developers and operations (O&M) teams automate infrastructure provisioning, deployment, and management.

Learn more

After you are familiar with the basics of ECS, you can read the following documents to learn more.

Before you purchase an ECS instance, select an appropriate instance type based on performance, cost, and workload requirements. For more information, see Instance type selection guide.
Choose a remote connection method and tool to log on to your ECS instance. For more information, see Select an ECS remote connection method.
Learn about the instance lifecycle and how to manage instance states, such as starting, restarting, or releasing an instance. For more information, see Instance lifecycle.
After you create an ECS instance, immediately create snapshots of your disks to back up data and prevent data loss. For more information, see Snapshot overview.