Abstract: ECS (Elastic Compute Service) is an elastic and scalable computing service, which can fully help you reduce IT costs, improve operation and maintenance efficiency, and enable you to focus more on your core business innovation. One of its important advantages is elastic computing, which can create thousands of cloud servers in minutes to cope with your business pressure, so that you can manage both horizontally and vertically according to your business needs.
ECS (Elastic Compute Service) is an elastic and scalable computing service that can fully help you reduce IT costs, improve operation and maintenance efficiency, and enable you to focus more on your core business innovation. One of its important advantages is elastic computing, which can create thousands of cloud servers in minutes to cope with your business pressure, so that you can manage both horizontally and vertically according to your business needs.
Below we will focus on the current elastic capabilities of cloud servers. Maybe there are functions that you don't know but are very much looking forward to have been quietly launched.
The current payment methods for cloud service ECS are mainly divided into two categories, prepaid and postpaid. The current cloud server mainly includes the following three components:
- The instance specification mainly constrains the CPU, memory, corresponding storage type, and network throughput (such as the maximum intranet bandwidth, public network bandwidth, and PPS). View all specification groups , support pay-as-you-go and monthly subscription.
- Storage, including a variety of disk types, supports pay-as-you-go and monthly subscription types.
- Bandwidth, which supports payment by traffic and fixed bandwidth.
| Instance Specifications | CPU, memory, upper limit of network capability, Quota of pay-as-you-go instances, and instance specification limit. | CPU, memory, network capacity limit |
| storage type | Independent cloud disk mounted separately | prepaid storage |
| Bandwidth Type | Metered billing, regardless of instance type. | According to the fixed bandwidth, if it is a pay-as-you-go instance, the bill is billed every hour, and if it is a prepaid instance, it will be charged in advance |
Horizontal expansion
This method is simply to increase or decrease cloud server resources, and select the appropriate number of server groups to meet the needs of the application. This method is relatively simple, and there are many ways to achieve it. The most common are the following:
- Create or release a cloud server through the ECS console, and you can easily expand the application by purchasing the same configuration , purchase history , etc.
- Create and release resources through OpenAPI according to your business scale . The specification and number of pay-as-you-go depends on your business level in ECS.
- You can also perform elastic scaling on resources according to your system load or scheduled tasks.
Vertical expansion
This method is simply to upgrade or reduce the configuration of the existing cloud servers. A typical feature of the business system is its continuous evolution. In the early stage of our application, due to the small business scale, the corresponding configuration can meet the business scenario, whether it is computing power, network capacity, storage capacity is rich, However, as the system continues to work, for example, running for 1-2 years, it is necessary to continuously upgrade the software architecture and hardware architecture of the system iteratively. Or when we need to carry out some activities and promotions, the needs of both computing power and network resources will be very large. At this time, the system needs to be configured and upgraded. We may also need to downgrade the configuration of cloud servers due to cost considerations when business and operational activities are over.
Below we expand the elastic capabilities supported by the current cloud server ECS:
Yearly and monthly instance upgrade
You need to pay a certain difference to upgrade the instance for a monthly subscription, and complete your upgrade in the following aspects. You can create an order through the console and pay for the order to complete the upgrade. If you execute it through OpenAPI, you need to reserve enough funds in your account to directly complete the deduction and execute it.
A typical and common scenario here is to upgrade the specifications of the instance. For example, we recently launched from entry-level to enterprise-level: cloud servers support "shared" upgrades to "exclusive" . And in order to align the life cycle of your resources with open disk conversion, play with ECS cloud disk - pay-as-you-go upgrade to annual cloud disk .
Support instance state constraint remarks| Instance Specifications | √ | Running or Stopped | The user upgrade payment does not force the user to shut down, and it will take effect after restarting the instance after paying the order. |
| Bandwidth | √ | Running or Stopped direct upgrade | Support for permanently increasing the bandwidth value |
| storage disk | √ | Running or Stopped | Supports the conversion of volume-based disks mounted under an instance to annual and monthly-based disks |
| Bandwidth Type | √ | Running or Stopped | The bandwidth type of supported instances is changed from per-flow bandwidth to per-fixed bandwidth |
Yearly and monthly subscription and downgrade
You can choose to downgrade the subscription of an instance with a monthly subscription before it expires. If the specifications of the instance are changed, you need to specify the restart time of the subscription.
Support instance state constraint remarks| Instance Specifications | √ | Running must reserve a restart time | The user must set the instance restart time when making a reservation and downgrade, and the retry time must be restarted within 7 days after the current validity period of the instance expires. |
| storage disk | √ | Running or Stopped | Supports the conversion of annual and monthly disks mounted under the instance to volume disks |
| Bandwidth | √ | Running or Stopped | Support for raising and lowering bandwidth values |
| Bandwidth Type | √ | Running or Stopped | Supports per-fix and per-flow bidirectional conversion of bandwidth types for instances |
| Purchase time | √ | Running or Stopped | Increase the purchase duration of an instance |
Temporary bandwidth upgrade for annual and monthly instances
It supports to temporarily increase the fixed bandwidth of the annual and monthly instance. After the end, the bandwidth of the instance will be reduced to the original bandwidth. Fully meet your temporary flexibility needs.
Support instance state constraint remarks| Bandwidth | √ | Running or Stopped | Support temporary (short-term) increase of bandwidth value, the shortest one day and the longest one month |
Variation by instance
For pay-as-you-go instances, we currently support the following components to be configured at any time. For specific instance specifications that can be configured, see .
Support instance state constraint remarks| Instance Specifications | √ | Stopped | Arbitrary configuration of instance specifications in the same series can be carried out |
| Bandwidth | √ | Running or Stopped | Support for permanently lowering and increasing the bandwidth value |
| storage disk | × | ||
| Bandwidth Type | √ | Running or Stopped | Payment types that support bandwidth adjustment |
Subcontract annual and monthly subscription instances
It is to convert the payment type of the instance, and does not require Stopped for the instance status. You can choose to convert the instance and the disk together to the prepaid method, or you can choose to convert only the instance to the prepaid method, and keep the disk using the pay-as-you-go method.
Support instance state constraint remarks| Payment type | √ | Running or Stopped | The payment type is changed from per-volume (post-paid) to annual subscription (pre-paid) |
| storage disk | √ | Running or Stopped | Supports converting all mass disks mounted under the instance into annual and monthly subscription disks (users can choose by themselves) |
Disk expansion
The disk capacity is expanded, and there are no special requirements for the status of the disk instance. It supports pay-as-you-go disks and disks with annual and monthly subscriptions. For annual and monthly subscriptions, an order must be paid. For details, see the documentation .
Support instance state constraint remarks| Disk capacity | √ | Running or Stopped | Support permanent expansion of disk capacity |
Real-time downgrading of annual and monthly subscriptions
According to the user's level, we enable real-time downgrade for some users. You can choose an instance with a monthly subscription in the console to downgrade your specifications, storage payment type, bandwidth and network. We will charge a certain handling fee according to the difference. Refunds and downgrades. Voucher refunds are not currently supported.
For example, you can refer to the following link for common scenarios to play with ECS cloud disk - advanced configuration of cloud disk , you can easily complete the type change on the console.
The overview page of the ECS console has a button to view privileges, all your privileges and quotas will be displayed to you, and you can check whether you have real-time downgraded privileges.
Support instance state constraint remarks| Instance Specifications | √ | Stopped | The instance must be stopped before the downgrade operation can be performed |
| Bandwidth | √ | Running or Stopped | Support for permanently reducing the bandwidth value |
| storage disk | √ | Running or Stopped | Supports the conversion of annual and monthly disks mounted under the instance to volume disks |
| Bandwidth Type | √ | Running or Stopped | Changed the bandwidth type of supported instances from per-fixed to per-flow bandwidth |
Summarize
If you want to do things well, you must first sharpen your tools. Appropriate instance specifications will fully release the elasticity of the server. Appropriate network storage can help you achieve the best server performance at the right cost. In the past year, the ECS team has opened up the elastic capabilities of multiple dimensions of ECS to fully meet your business planning and growth. We have also provided most of the related OpenAPIs to make you more flexible and flexible to meet your elastic needs. You are welcome to come use.