ECS

Aliyun Elastic Compute Service (ECS) provides resizable virtual servers across multiple regions and instance families.

Instance Families

Family	Purpose	Example
ecs.g7/g8	General purpose	App servers, web frontends
ecs.c7/c8	Compute optimized	Batch processing, encoding
ecs.r7/r8	Memory optimized	Caches, in-memory databases
ecs.hfg7	High frequency	Low-latency applications
ecs.i4	Local SSD storage	High I/O databases
ecs.gn7	GPU compute	ML training/inference
ecs.ebmgn7	Bare metal GPU	Large-scale training

Instance naming convention: ecs.<family><generation>.<size> (e.g., ecs.g7.large, ecs.c7.xlarge).

Billing Methods

• PayAsYouGo — Hourly billing, no commitment.
• Subscription — Monthly/yearly prepayment with discount.
• Preemptible — Spot-like, up to 90% discount, may be reclaimed.
• Reserved Instance — Capacity reservation in exchange for a usage discount.
• Savings Plan — Commit to a fixed hourly spend for discount.

CLI

Instances

aliyun ecs RunInstances \
  --RegionId cn-hangzhou \
  --ImageId aliyun_3_x64_20G_alibase \
  --InstanceType ecs.g7.large \
  --SecurityGroupId sg-xxx \
  --VSwitchId vsw-xxx \
  --InstanceName test-instance \
  --InstanceChargeType PostPaid
aliyun ecs DescribeInstances --RegionId cn-hangzhou
aliyun ecs DescribeInstanceAttribute --InstanceId i-xxx
aliyun ecs StartInstance --InstanceId i-xxx
aliyun ecs StopInstance --InstanceId i-xxx
aliyun ecs RebootInstance --InstanceId i-xxx
aliyun ecs DeleteInstance --InstanceId i-xxx --Force true
aliyun ecs ModifyInstanceSpec --InstanceId i-xxx --InstanceType ecs.g7.xlarge

Disks

aliyun ecs CreateDisk \
  --RegionId cn-hangzhou \
  --ZoneId cn-hangzhou-h \
  --DiskCategory cloud_essd \
  --Size 100 \
  --DiskName data-disk
aliyun ecs DescribeDisks --RegionId cn-hangzhou
aliyun ecs AttachDisk --InstanceId i-xxx --DiskId d-xxx
aliyun ecs DetachDisk --InstanceId i-xxx --DiskId d-xxx
aliyun ecs ResizeDisk --DiskId d-xxx --NewSize 200
aliyun ecs DeleteDisk --DiskId d-xxx

Images

aliyun ecs DescribeImages --RegionId cn-hangzhou --ImageOwnerAlias system
aliyun ecs CreateImage --InstanceId i-xxx --ImageName custom-image
aliyun ecs DeleteImage --ImageId m-xxx --RegionId cn-hangzhou

Snapshots

aliyun ecs CreateSnapshot --DiskId d-xxx --SnapshotName backup-2026-06
aliyun ecs DescribeSnapshots --RegionId cn-hangzhou --DiskId d-xxx
aliyun ecs DeleteSnapshot --SnapshotId s-xxx

Key Pairs

aliyun ecs CreateKeyPair --RegionId cn-hangzhou --KeyPairName my-key
aliyun ecs ImportKeyPair \
  --RegionId cn-hangzhou \
  --KeyPairName my-key \
  --PublicKeyBody "$(cat ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub)"
aliyun ecs DescribeKeyPairs --RegionId cn-hangzhou
aliyun ecs AttachKeyPair --KeyPairName my-key --InstanceIds '["i-xxx"]'

Reference:

1. Official Website
2. ECS Instance Families