Quick Starter Guide to Alibaba Cloud

Thomas Poon, Solutions Architect

Feb 2018
Starter guide for Alibaba Cloud January, 2018

Table of Contents
Abstract ................................................................................................................................................. 3
How to register an Alibaba Cloud account and get started? ..................................................................... 3
Registering online and receiving the New User coupon ..................................................................................... 3
Payment Methods ........................................................................................................................................... 3
So you have logged in: what next? .......................................................................................................... 4
Choose between personal account / enterprise corporate account ................................................................... 4
Proceed for real name registration ................................................................................................................... 4
Seeking help with account issues ...................................................................................................................... 5
Tips for using Elastic Compute Service (ECS) ............................................................................................ 6
Subscription vs Pay-As-You-Go: how should I choose? ...................................................................................... 6
SSD Cloud Disk vs Ultra Cloud Disk.................................................................................................................... 6
Elastic IP addresses vs Statically Assigned Public IP Addresses ........................................................................... 6
Use SSH Key Pairs to log in to Linux ECS Instances ............................................................................................. 8
Only use VPC network instead of Classic Network ............................................................................................. 8
Why I cannot create more than 10 x Pay as you go ECS? .................................................................................... 8
Why I cannot find the instance needed in PAYG but can find it in subscription? ................................................. 8
Tips for Relational Database Service (RDS) .............................................................................................. 9
When to use subscription/When to use Pay-As-You-Go for pricing model? ........................................................ 9
How to upgrade/downgrade RDS instance? ...................................................................................................... 9
Should I enable internet Address for RDS instance? .......................................................................................... 9
Any special feature for RDS that can improve DB performance? ........................................................................ 9
What good features that RDS can provide? ..................................................................................................... 10
Tips for Networking ................................................................................................... 错误!未定义书签。
How get I connect Alibaba Cloud with the company data center ..................................................................... 10
How to let ECS that only with private IP to connect internet ........................................................................... 10
Tips for enhancing security ................................................................................................................... 10
We need Anti-DDoS service to fulfill the requirements, can Alibaba Cloud help? ............................................. 10
Any other security products can enhance the security? ................................................................................... 11
Tips for Web Site accelerations ............................................................................................................. 12
Leverage Alibaba Cloud CDN service ............................................................................................................... 12
Leverage OSS Object Store Service.................................................................................................................. 12
Conclusion ............................................................................................................................................ 12

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Starter guide for Alibaba Cloud January, 2018

Abstract
Alibaba Cloud may be a new platform for many users. This guide introduces basic technological
and operational procedures which may help new users understand Alibaba Cloud. This starter
guide aims to minimize the learning curve for our customers.

How to register an Alibaba Cloud account and get started?

Registering online and receiving the New User coupon

There is a clear step by step online guide on how to create an Alibaba Cloud account and get the
New User coupon. Take a look here:

https://www.alibabacloud.com/getting-started/projects/how-to-use-the-new-user-free-credit

How to use your $300 USD coupon:

https://www.alibabacloud.com/campaign/free-trial

Payment Methods

Alibaba Cloud now supports PayPal. This is the fastest way for you to get started if you have a
PayPal account. However, keep in mind that certain products can only be purchased by users who
have bound a credit or debit card to their account.

If you are enterprise customer, you can contact your Business Development manager (BD) and
ask about other payment methods, such as an account line-of-credit.

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So you have logged in: what next?

Choose between personal account / enterprise corporate account

If you registered a personal account and want to upgrade to a corporate account later, you can
use this URL to upgrade:

https://myaccount.aliyun.com//account/complete-profile#/content

When should you choose a corporate/enterprise account?

- When you want to use business registration information to do complete the real name
registration process
- When you want to use a line-of-credit/credit limit as payment method
- When you want to download invoices which show your company name

Proceed for real name registration

If you want to purchase and use resources in mainland China (ECS, OSS, etc…), you will have to
do real name registration. Personal accounts can complete this process using a passport or
driver’s license. Corporate accounts will need the ID of the company’s representative and proof of
the company’s legal status (business license / registration).

You can complete the process here:

https://account-
intl.console.aliyun.com/?spm=5176.2020520001.1001.d600.4c64e10dsL8R7u#/intlAuth

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Seeking help with account issues

If you encounter issues and would like to seek help from the Alibaba Cloud team, just click
Support -> Open a new ticket. You can create and submit support tickets via this dialog. Alibaba
Cloud’s support team will respond to your request as soon as possible.

If you are an enterprise customer with an urgent issue, don’t hesitate to contact your regional
Business Development manager (BD) or Solution Architect (SA).

After-Sales support plans are also, which can provide SLAs of 15 minutes or less for business-
critical issues and Instant Messaging support for faster, more personal support (Enterprise
Support Plan).

See the after-sales support plans page for details: https://www.alibabacloud.com/support/after-sales

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Tips for using Elastic Compute Service (ECS)

Subscription vs Pay-As-You-Go: how should I choose?

This largely depends on your usage scenario. If you are really sure the ECS instance chosen is
suitable for your needs, choose subscription because pre-paid instances allow you to estimate
your spending more easily. Pre-paid resources are also typically discounted when compared with
Pay-As-You-Go (PAYG) resources. Pay-As-You-Go is a better choice for scenarios where you need
to frequently change configurations, perform testing, or scale up and down with load.

Benefits of Pay-As-You-Go:
- Per-second billing
- Stop instances any time
- Can upgrade/downgrade any time
- Great for testing (release resources when you’re done!)

There is no difference in performance or capabilities between subscription and PAYG instances of

the same family and type.

SSD Cloud Disk vs Ultra Cloud Disk

SSD Cloud disks have higher performance (IOPS) than Ultra Cloud Disks. In most cases, SSD
Cloud Disks are recommended as they are not too much more expensive than Ultra Cloud Disks
for most workloads.

Elastic IP addresses vs Statically Assigned Public IP Addresses

When starting an ECS instance, during the “Network Configuration” step you can choose to make
your instance accessible from the public internet by checking the box “Assign Public IP”. The
public IP assigned will stay with your instance until it is released.

For more flexibility, you can instead uncheck this box and later assign an EIP (Elastic IP) address
to your instance to allow access to your ECS instance from the Internet. The advantage of EIP
addresses is that they can be bound and unbound from an instance at will: if you need to release
one ECS instance and replace it with another one, you can simply bind your EIP to the new
instance once it is running, allowing you to keep the same IP addresses even while changing
servers.

If you have already selected “Assign Public IP”, you can convert your ECS instances over to using
EIP by clicking “More” next to your ECS instance in the ECS Console:

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Use SSH Key Pairs to log in to Linux ECS Instances

If your Linux ECS instance has Public IP address, we highly recommend you bind an SSH key pair to the
instance and use that for login, rather than a password. Login with passwords is not recommended
because attackers may be able to successfully access your instance by brute-forcing (guessing) your
password. You can manage keypairs from the Alibaba Cloud console. The easiest way to bind a key pair to
an instance is during ECS instance creation. You can create a keypair before creating your instance by
navigating to “Key Pairs” in the ECS Console:

Only use VPC network instead of Classic Network

Some products and services still support the use of “Classic” networking, which is a simpler networking
model which was used prior to VPC.

We highly recommend you use VPC groups instead: they are more configurable and easier to secure.
Advanced features like Express Connect and VPN Gateway work only with VPC network groups.

Why can’t I create more than 10 Pay-As-You-Go ECS instances?

This is the default instance limit on each account for risk control purposes. If you expect you will need to
start more than 10 PAYG ECS instances, please open a ticket with support and ask for the limit to be
increased.

When buying ECS instances, some instance types are only available when I choose “Subscription”,
not Pay-As-You-Go: why is this?

Again, for risk control reasons, some instance classes are not available under the Pay-As-You-Go billing
model. You can raise a ticket with support to have your account privileges modified.

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Tips for Relational Database Service (RDS)

Which payment model should I use? PAYG or Subscription?

Similar to ECS, it is a price-flexibility tradeoff. See the ECS pricing model discussion above.

How can I upgrade/downgrade RDS instances?

You can do in in the RDS console or via API call. This operation will take time and the time
required is correlated with the volume of data stored by your RDS instance, so we suggest you
make changes only during non-peak times or during a scheduled maintenance window.

Should I enable Internet Address for my RDS instance?

We suggest that you do not make your RDS instances accessible from the internet. If you must
use this feature, please take advantage of the RDS Internet Address whitelist, to ensure only
trusted hosts can connect to your RDS instance.

Are there any special features of RDS which can improve DB performance?

Alibaba Cloud RDS can provide Read-only database instances which can reduce read pressure on
your database. You can use the Read-only instance to greatly improve read access response time
and reduce load on the primary database instance. Data is replicated to read-only instances in
near real time.

Introduction to read-only instances:

https://www.alibabacloud.com/help/doc-detail/26136.htm

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What are some of the key features of RDS?

- Simple, one-click to setup: no need to install and configure database software yourself
- Built-in Active-Standby and multi-zone deployment for most of the supported database engines
- Snapshotting/automatic backups (user configurable)
- Alibaba Cloud support can help you to identify performance bottlenecks when needed

Networking Tips
How can I connect Alibaba Cloud with my company’s data center?

There are two common approaches to meet this need:

1) IPsec VPN using VPN Gateway

You can go to the Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) console, and then use the VPN Gateway service to
establish a VPN connection between Alibaba Cloud and your local IDC.

This is a fast, low-cost solution suitable for customers who do not need an extremely fast or reliable
connection between their IDC and the cloud.

Link: https://www.alibabacloud.com/product/vpn-gateway

2) Express Connect leased line

This is a better option for customers with high speed/reliability/bandwidth requirements. Express
Connect is a leased line product: customers connect to an Alibaba Cloud point-of-presence which is
physically near to their IDC by using a leased line. Express Connect allows them to connect this
leased line connection to their Alibaba Cloud VPC group(s).

Link: https://www.alibabacloud.com/product/express-connect#scenarios

How can an ECS with only a private IP address connect to the Internet?

When a customer purchases an ECS instance, they can choose not to bind a public IP address, but
they may still need to connect to the internet to download patches and updates or install
software. NAT Gateway can be leveraged to give instances with private IP addresses access to the
internet using the SNAT feature:

https://www.alibabacloud.com/product/nat

Tips for enhancing security

We need protection against DDoS Attacks: what can Alibaba Cloud do to help?

Alibaba Cloud Anti-DDoS Pro is a value-added protection service to ensure high availability and provide
complete protection to your online business from all kinds of malicious DDoS attacks. The product also

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ensures the elimination of single-point-of-failure during DDoS attacks, HTTP flood attacks, empty
connection attacks, slow connection attacks and other web application attacks.

Link: https://www.alibabacloud.com/product/ddos-pro

What other security products are available?

Besides Anti-DDoS, if customers need to protect a web application against common web attacks like SQL
Injection or XSS, they can utilize the WAF (Web Application Firewall) service.

WAF can be deployed in front of almost any type of web application, and can be used in front of web
applications hosted with any cloud provider (yes, even AWS or Azure!). Deployment is simple and can be
achieved in as little as 30 minutes.

Link: https://www.alibabacloud.com/product/waf

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Tips for Web Acceleration

Leverage Alibaba Cloud CDN service

Alibaba Cloud CDN can deliver online content to end-users anywhere in the world. Our CDN service now
has more than 1,500 points of presence around the world (1,300+ in China, and another 200+ around the
world).

CDN can be purchased and deployed quickly and easily. In as little as 30 minutes, customers can accelerate
their content for every user, everywhere!

Deploying CDN in front of a website or web application also reduces load on the application because static
web content is cached + served by the CDN rather than the web servers themselves.

The CDN service can also be used to accelerate VoD (Video on Demand) and Video streaming.

Link: https://www.alibabacloud.com/product/cdn

Leverage OSS: Object Store Service

OSS (Object Storage Service) is a distributed object (file) storage system, similar to Amazon S3. Static
content such as JS, CSS, HTML, Videos, and Images can be stored in OSS. In fact, static websites can be
completely hosted in OSS, freeing users from the need to create and administer web servers.

Three storage tiers are provided (standard, infrequent access, and archive) to meet different usage
scenarios.

Dynamic web applications must still be deployed on ECS, but some static content can be hosted on OSS to
reduce the pressure on servers during peak times. Storage of large static assets in OSS also reduces costs,
because storage costs per GB in OSS are significantly lower than the per GB costs for SSD Cloud Disks or
Ultra Cloud Disks.

Link: https://www.alibabacloud.com/product/oss

Conclusion
That’s it! Feel free to explore some of our other products and services, available on the Alibaba Cloud
international webpage: https://www.alibabacloud.com

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