[Share]A Quick Guide for Tech Geeks

erhaps you are a tech novice, or a cloud computing veteran.Either way, you may encounter some complicated issues when using Alibaba Cloud products, just wondering what to do.This is why the Alibaba Cloud aftersales team has summarized the 10 most frequently asked questions about aftersales, hoping that the answers below will help you quickly resolve your problems.
Hey, if you are willing to study hard, you can easily turn into a tech-savvy user in just one hour. Then, you'll never have to worry about your server again.
ForBeginners
1. What are the username and password used to log into my server?
The username is root for Linux operating systems and administrator for Windows operating systems. The password will be sent, via a text message, to the cell phone and, by email, to the mailbox bound to your cloud account.

2. After modifying the console password, why can't I use the new password to log in?    
After clicking the Reset Password button on the console, you must restart the server on the console for the new password to take effect.

3. After purchasing/adding data disks to a Linux server, why can't I see them?  
Before they are displayed and ready for use, data disks purchased for Linux servers must be formatted, partitioned, and attached. To learn how to attach data disks in Linux.click here to learn more

4. In a Windows system, how should I partition and format hard drives?    
To learn about hard drive partitioning and formatting in Windows 2008.click here to learn more

5. Do ECS instances support configuration upgrades and downgrades? When I change the configuration, will the IP address also change and will I lose data? In what ways do the changes in configuration affect servers?
ECS instances support configuration upgrades and downgrades.
a) You can use the console to upgrade your CPU, memory, hard disk, and bandwidth online. After upgrading, you do not have to redeploy the environment or migrate data, and your IP address will remain unchanged. Before CPU and memory upgrades, you must first stop the ECS instance. After the upgrade, you must restart the server for the changes to take effect. Hard disk and bandwidth upgrades are seamless, so you do not have to stop and restart the instance. Based on you business needs, you can add multiple data disks at a time and upgrade the bandwidth on a daily basis. For an upgrade, please refer to
b) You can only downgrade your CPU, memory and bandwidth during renewal (select Renewal and Configuration Change). For any configuration change to take effect before a service expires, downgrade the configuration and then restart the server on the console.For renewal and configuration downgrade, please refer to

6. Does Alibaba Cloud provide free environment configuration and data migration services?
The migration service requires that the source server OS be the same as the OS on the ECS instance purchased from Alibaba Cloud. For example, migration is possible from Windows to Windows or Linux to Linux, but not from Windows to Linux or Linux to Windows.
Scope of free migration service:
a) Migrating original data (database data, attachments, program files) to your purchased ECS instance or Alibaba Cloud RDS;
b) Installing licensed software and synchronizing environment configurations;
c) Troubleshooting (excluding program debugging).
Free installation scope: Licensed software installation and environment configuration synchronization.

ForAdvanced Users
1. Why does it take so long to restart the server?    
To restart a server, you must first stop and then start the server. If your server was not performing well before it was restarted (for example, the CPU or bandwidth was working at full capacity or the server was responding slowly), or if a file system self-test scan was running during the restart, the restart may be slow. In any of the above situations, the restart process may take about 5-15 minutes. We suggest you simply wait patiently. Also, please do not close the shutdownMon.exe process that comes with a Windows system. Otherwise, it may take longer to restart your Windows server.

2. What should I do if the server bandwidth reaches the full capacity?
A high traffic volume may be caused by the following factors:
a) Large websites (such as portal sites and online shopping sites): These websites handle heavy access traffic and generate a high page view, a high hits value, and a large daily traffic volume.
b) Poor webpage design: If webpages contain large images or audio/video files, this can make the pages too big.
c) Webpage content leeching or data downloads: The websites provide *.mp3, *.rar, *.zip, *.exe files for download, or stream video or audio files.
d) Websites under DDoS attack or infected with trojans: This can produce high traffic volumes in a short time.
How to avoid high traffic volumes:
a) If your site is relatively large, website click rates and high normal traffic volumes can use up your bandwidth. You can upgrade your bandwidth to solve this problem.
b) If your bandwidth problem is due to an excessive number or size of audio/video files, we suggest you reduce the number of such files.
c) If your webpage image file settings are improper, optimize your webpage layout.
d) If your webpage content is being leeched by trojans, enhance your site protection. If it is under attack, you can solve this problem by using Alibaba Cloud Security's DDoS attack cleaning settings.

3. What should I do if the server CPU is at full capacity?
We suggest you check the following:
a) Check that the maximum program thread count is sufficient.
b) Is the program code insufficiently optimized? Does it have infinite loops or deadlocks?
c) Are the web configuration file parameters sufficiently optimized?
d) View the web and system logs to check for abnormal access.
e) Is the website being leeched?
f) Are there currently any search engine crawlers crawling large areas of your website?
g) Have you experienced small-scale cyberattacks or are there abnormal processes?
h) Check your machine for viruses or trojans.
For a Linux server, you can use the system and web logs, as well as the top, free, uptime, sar, and ps commands to identify the cause. For a Windows server, analyze the situation using the resource monitor.

4. Recently, I have not been able to perform any operations and cannot even open my website. What is wrong?
We suggest you:
a) First, check that your server's CPU, IO, bandwidth, and memory usage performance are normal.
b) Telnet the 80 web port and 3306 data library port of your server IP address to check that the web server's apache, nginx, iis, and other databases are running normally.
c) Check your website for any error, such as 404, 502, 503, or 504. Generally, these types of errors indicate internal web server problems.
d) Check if your server is under attack or has been hacked.
e) Check if the disk space is full.
f) Check if the ECS website is experiencing high user traffic volumes.
g) Check that your server is in the running status.

5. When I ping the ECS instance, the delay varies largely, and the network access is unstable. What should I do?
We suggest you check the following:
a) Check the ECS instance's performance. If the CPU is at full capacity, the problem might be caused by any of the following factors: there is a high load; the bandwidth is at full capacity; the memory usage is high; there is a virus; or a process does not run properly.
b) Ping other local websites to see if they have the same issue. This can tell you if the local network is unstable.
c) If a ping can be successfully sent to other websites, but not the ECS instances or websites, during periods of instability, track the ping or route from your local machine to the ECS instance, and determine if the problem is caused by any intermediate routing node.
d) Check for a problem with your server's firewall settings.
e) Check if the server is under attack.

6. How can I enhance ECS instance security?
a) Check for server application and website program vulnerabilities, enable the relevant security functions of Alibaba Cloud Security, and purchase ECS instances running on a reinforced edition of Alibaba Cloud security.
b) Enable and configure your server's default firewall, and disable unnecessary ports.
c) Make your password as strong as possible and change the default remote port to another port.
d) Promptly install patches for your Windows server. Install the appropriate security software as needed.

7. What should I do if my ECS instance experiences a cyberattack?
First, check if, due to the attack, your server is performing security cleaning. If not, and if you are experiencing a DDoS attack with too small traffic to trigger automatic cleaning, we suggest you adjust the cleaning trigger threshold. The default value is 300 Mbps, but you can try to set it to a lower value. At the same time, you must check if there are malicious IP addresses connected to your server. If so, you can block them with the firewall. If necessary, you can manually submit a ticket to us and we will help clean the traffic to your IP address.

8. What should I note when using ECS instances?
To improve your use of ECS instances, please note the following usage considerations. Click here for more details  
1) Do not randomly upgrade the kernel or OS of the ECS instance.
2) Do not enable SElinux for the ECS instance.
3) Do not uninstall pvdriver from your ECS instance.
4) For ECS instances with 4 GB or more of memory, select a 64-bit operating system (32-bit operation systems have a 4 GB memory addressing restriction), such as centos5.7 64-bit, centos6.2 64-bit, Debian 6.0 64-bit, ubuntu10.10 64-bit, Windows 2008 64-bit, or redhat5.4 64-bit. Windows 32-bit operating systems support a maximum of 4 CPU cores.
5) Do not modify the network card's MAC address.
6) Linux ECS instance data disks are not partitioned or formatted. Before using them, you need to attach the data disks.
7) We recommend against using virtual memory for Windows OS ECS instances.
8) We do not suggest using swap partitions for Linux OS ECS instances.
9) At the moment, ECS instances do not support SNAT and other IP packet address translation services. You can achieve this function by setting up a VPN on your own or using a proxy.
10) At the moment, ECS instances do not support multicast protocol. If the applications on your ECS instance need the multicasting feature, we suggest using the unicast point-to-point method.
11) Linux ECS users should not modify the default /etc/issue file on the Linux server to avoid making the console button unavailable.
12) At the moment, ECS instances do not support the loading of external hardware devices (such as, hardware dongles, U disks, external hard disks, and banking U keys).
13) At the moment, ECS instances do not support sound cards.
14) Do not close the Windows system shutdownMon.exe process. Otherwise it may take longer to restart the Windows server.

9. My ECS website is rarely or never indexed by Baidu and Google, what should I do?
For Baidu indexing: To avoid website indexing exceptions due to website server changes, we suggest that webmasters follow the steps below (refer to the Baidu indexing instructions for Alibaba Cloud server webmasters)
a) Open a new space, migrate the entire site to this new space, and keep the site readily accessible.
b) Update and direct the domain name server to the IP address of the new space.
c) Ensure that the old space can still be accessed for a time.
d) Pay attention to the access log and wait until Baiduspider has completely crawled the website in the new space. Then, stop service for the old space.

For Google indexing: If you have recently migrated your site to Alibaba Cloud, it may take some time for Google to index the site. We suggest you wait for a while when adding external links, changing external links, and using other methods to increase indexing. Also, you can use the Google webmaster tool to submit the site for indexing (https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/1352276) and check the results. If you have migrated your site to Alibaba Cloud ECS some time ago, we suggest you:  
a) Use the Google Webmaster Tool's "Fetch as Google" feature to determine whether Google can crawl your site normally. At the same time, check if your site's user agent filter or anti-leeching settings prevent it from being crawled.
b) Log into Google's Webmaster Tools (https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/) and switch 'Target User In' to 'China'.
c) Set your DNS server to HiChina or another stable domestic DNS. If you use a foreign DNS server, it may sometimes be affected by the GFW's DNS poisoning tactics, making it impossible for some domestic and foreign crawlers to crawl your server. Also, some unstable domestic DNS service providers occasionally encounter similar blocking problems that may intermittently stop crawling.
In fact, if the site has been deleted from the search engine, this has nothing to do with the server provider. Rather, it is largely related to adjustments to the search engine algorithm. We suggest you pay attention to Google's and Baidu's algorithms. They update their algorithms several times each year.

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