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Elastic Compute Service

Getting Started

Quick start

This topic guides you through the process from purchasing an Elastic Compute Service (ECS) instance to using it, helping you quickly get started with ECS.

What is ECS

An ECS instance consists of fundamental computing components such as CPU, memory, image, and volume. When you purchase an ECS instance, you are required to configure items such as instance type, image type, volume type, network type, and login credentials. After this, your instance is configured with features such as computing, storage, and network. During usage, you can customise your ECS instance at any time based on business needs. This allows you to create a secure, stable, flexible, and efficient computing environment.

To Learn About	Refer To
What is ECS	What is Elastic Compute Service
Benefits of ECS	Benefits
Application scenarios of ECS	Application scenario
Regions and availability zones where ECS is purchasable	Regions and availability zones
Usage notes for ECS	Usage notes
Quota limits on ECS resources	Constraints

ECS instance types

Based on system architecture, ECS instances are categorized into three types: x86 computing, Elastic Bare Metal (EBM), and heterogeneous computing.

Based on business scenario, ECS instances are categorized into General-purpose, Compute-optimized, Memory-optimized, Big Data, and other types.

To Learn About	Refer To
ECS instance types provided by the platform	Introduction to ECS instance types
How to select appropriate ECS instances based on your business needs	Best practices for instance selection

ECS billing

ECS provides two main billing methods: Pay-as-you-go and Subscription. You can also choose discounted billing options such as Spot instances or Reserved Instances (RIs) based on your needs.

For more information about billing, refer to Billing overview.

tip

For more information about pricing of ECS resources, refer to Pricing.

Purchasing ECS instance

The platform provides multiple custom purchase options for you. Refer to How to purchase instances.

tip

The topic Purchasing and using ECS instance demonstrates a simple way to create an ECS instance from scratch for your reference. The procedure provided under this topic covers the entire lifecycle of purchase, connection, application deployment, and release.

If you are using ECS for the first time, you can use the configuration recommended by the platform to quickly purchase an instance. This way, you do not need to make manual input or custom configuration, making the purchase easy and fast.

Last updated: 2026.06.18 16:37:45