Virtual servers : Login Instance and Instance images in AWS and Alibaba Cloud

Today we are going to talk about the virtual servers in Alibaba Cloud and in AWS. When we are talking about the Virtual servers we will going to discuss about the Login instances and Instance images.

As you may go through the previous articles on the comparison and you may see that Both AWS EC2 and Alibaba Cloud ECS provide virtual servers for cloud computing. These virtual servers and virtual machines provide IaaS services to users. 

Alibaba Cloud and AWS servers share similar terminologies and concepts. Below is the description showing how Elastic Compute Cloud in AWS and Elastic Compute Service in Alibaba provide various services.

Fig 1.1- Virtual Servers in AWS and Alibaba Cloud

Login Instance Methods:
Alibaba Cloud ECS allows an SSH key to be created after an instance startup is successful and a login after the instance is bound. Furthermore, Alibaba Cloud ECS provides the username and password login method for users who are not familiar with SSH keys. Amazon AWS EC2 servers provide SSH keys for login.

Alibaba Cloud provides a way to allow users to connect to ECS directly by Management Terminal (also called VNC) on the console. Alibaba Cloud ECS and AWS EC2 employ the same method to categorize VM instances by specifications and types, but the categorization differs in terms of CPU, memory, storage performance, and network capability.

AWS EC2 categorizes instances by configuration, while Alibaba Cloud ECS categorizes instances into different families by application scenarios. Alibaba Cloud ECS provides multiple types of instance families and configurations to meet business requirements and performance requirements in different scenarios

Instance images:
AWS EC2 and Alibaba Cloud ECS use images to create instances. AWS instance images are referred to as Amazon Machine Images (AMIs), and Alibaba Cloud instance images are simply referred to as Images.

Alibaba Cloud ECS provides four types of images for users to choose from public images, cloud marketplace images, user shared images, and custom images. AWS EC2 provides official AMI templates, custom AMIs, cloud marketplace AMIs, and community AMIs. Like the custom AMIs of AWS, Alibaba Cloud custom images are created by users based on snapshots or the current state of an instance.

Note: The community AMIs of AWS is available to all AWS accounts, a feature which is currently not supported on Alibaba Cloud ECS.

Custom images and shared images can be used only in the same region. To use the images in a different region, you need to replicate them to that region first. Custom images can be shared to other specific Alibaba Cloud users by using the image sharing function of Alibaba Cloud ECS.

As you see the AWS EC2 Spot Instance, Alibaba Cloud ECS currently provides billing models for spot instances.