How to launch your First ECS Linux instance on Alibaba Cloud

While the talks are around for Amazon EC2 instances, Azure Virtual Machine on Microsoft Azure and Google Compute Engine instances. Let us get our hands dirty by creating first instance on Alibaba Cloud.

Unlike any other Cloud platform the very first step before you spin your Virtual machine instance is to create a Free trial account. Please refer article

1. Login to Alibaba Cloud console using a the free trial account credentials.

2. Click on the console from the bottom of the portal.

3. Click on the Elastic Compute Service under Product & Services.

4. Click on Instances at the left hand side.

5. Select the Region this is for management console and not for the ECS VM deployment and click on Create Instance.

6. Click on Advanced Purchase & choose the pricing model as "Pay-As-you-Go". PAYG model pricing is based on the usage and no. of hours the instance is turned ON. However Subscription based model is fixed fees that gets deducted from the free trial account balance.

7. Select the Datacenter Region and zone where actually the ECS instance will be created.

8. Select the instance type and instance configuration from the respective family.

9. Select Network type with default configuration and select Data Transfer model under Network Billing Type.

Note: Under Network Bandwidth if you do not provide network bandwidth details, then no Public IP is assigned to the instance. You may not be able to access the instance over internet. So to access the instance over public network it is important to specify the bandwidth. Once you specify the bandwidth as 1Mbps public IP gets binded with the ECS instance.

10. Select the Operating System version, here you have the option to choose Windows, Linux (centOS, Ubuntu and other flavor of linux).

11. Select the Storage type, OS disk storage is installed on this storage. You have the option to select SSD Cloud Disk for faster OS to boot.( this will increase the instance pricing so kindly read the instance pricing section carefully in Production scenario). You can additional disk if required.

12. Under Security Setting, you can set credentials for the access to the ECS instance for root user.

13. You can set custom user data information and Instance name like "TestServer" for you to identify.

14. In the overview pane, summary of the ECS instance is available, Click Buy Now.

15. After clicking on Buy Now, confirmation page is displayed. Enable the check box for General terms and Click on Activate.

16. On the activation page click on the Console tab, it will take you to the instance details.

17. Under Instance, you will be able to see the running instances details.Click on Running.

18. Running instance details is available with Public & Private IP. You may be able to connect to the running instance by clicking connect.

19. Once you click on Connect, it displays the VNC password. Please make a note of the VNC password, else you will not be able to login to the instance later in future.

20. You can connect to the Server Terminal by sending Remote Command.

21. It will ask for VNC password, please type the VNC password & click on OK.

22. After you provide the VNC password, you are connected to Server console. To Login to ECS Linux instance type the root login and credentials for the same.

23. Once you type the credentials for the root login, you are logged into the ECS Linux instance Successfully. It displays a welcome message.

By following the above steps you have successfully launched your First ECS Linux instance on Alibaba Cloud.

I hope the article was helpful and Thank You for reading the article.

                                                                                             Courtesy: Ajay Pal

How to Create Trail Account (Worth $300) in Alibaba Cloud (Aliyun)

Go to this link [OR] Go visit https://www.alibabacloud.com/campaign/free-trial and then click on "Free Account" in right top corner.

You will be presented with below screen, fill the details and click on confirm to move further;

You will be prompted to verify the email address for getting successful registered as Alibaba Cloud User.

In next step, you need to select account type (individual or corporate) and provide a billing address.

Then select a payment method (Credit Card or PayPal). If you select PayPal, then it will redirect you to PayPal.com to sign up for a Billing Agreement with Alibaba Cloud. This Billing Agreement will allow Alibaba Cloud to charge you for your purchases directly from your PayPal account.

If you select Credit Card then you need to provide Card Information (Note: Debit Card also works) and then click "Next" to verify ownership of Credit Card.

There are 2 options (by transaction code or by transaction amount) to verify ownership of Credit Card. Go with the one which works best with Credit Card you have.

If you go with "transaction amount (USD)" for verification then you need to do the following if you are in India;

1. If your card's statement shows transaction amount in USD then just enter the amount which got charged to your card and click on submit.
2. If your statement shows in INR then try dividing the amount by 64.25 and whatever is the result put there and click on submit (Note: you will be charged twice, look at the 2nd transaction and not the 1st one). In below example 21.31/64.25=0.33, so put 0.33 and submit for verification.

3. If nothing works, open a ticket with Alibaba Cloud and they will help you out.

As soon you are done with this, you will be presented with console as shown below and you are ready to get started;

What you get in Free Trail can be found here: https://www.alibabacloud.com/campaign/free-trial

If you want to check where this credited $300 show up? then select "Billing Management" and go to "Coupon Management"

                                                                                                               Courtesy: IUG & Mazhar Mirza