Check ECS instance health status to determine OS availability, network connectivity, and performance in the ECS console or through API operations.
Instance health status
-
Monitor instance health status to detect and troubleshoot issues early.
For example, an instance in the Running lifecycle state may have an unhealthy OS. Only when the health status is OK can you access the instance through SSH or RDP.
-
Health status updates every minute. Monitor it to identify and handle exceptions early.
-
To receive notifications about health status changes, create event-triggered alert rules for changes in the health status of instances. See Manage system event alert rules (legacy).
-
The following table compares health status and lifecycle status.
Lifecycle state (Lifecycle Status)
Health state (HealthStatus)
Description
Handling method
Starting
Initializing
The instance is initializing.
Wait for the instance to start.
Running
The instance OS is starting.
Wait for the instance to start.
Running
Impaired
-
The instance OS is running, but performance may be degraded due to underlying host, storage, or network issues.
-
The instance OS is running, but the instance encounters a blue screen or hangs due to an out of memory (OOM) error.
-
Start or restart the instance.
-
Contact Alibaba Cloud technical support.
Running
OK
The instance OS is running normally with no external issues.
No
Stopping/Stopped
InsufficientData
The instance is stopping or stopped.
Start the instance.
Deleted
NotApplicable
The instance lifecycle state is invalid.
No
-
View instance health status
View the health status of an instance in the ECS console
-
Go to ECS console - Instances.
In the upper-left corner of the page, select a region and resource group.
-
Add the Health Status column to the instance list.
-
In the upper-right corner of the instance list, click the
icon. -
In the Instance List Settings dialog box, click the
icon next to Health Status in the Columns Not Displayed section, then click Continue. 
-
-
Find the target instance and check its Health Status column.
View the health status of instances by using Alibaba Cloud CLI
-
Call DescribeInstances and DescribeInstancesFullStatus to query the health status of specific instances:
aliyun ecs DescribeInstances --RegionId TheRegionId --output cols=InstanceId,InstanceName rows=Instances.Instance[] aliyun ecs DescribeInstancesFullStatus --RegionId TheRegionId --InstanceId.1 i-bp1afnc98r8k69****** --output cols=HealthStatus rows=InstanceFullStatusSet.InstanceFullStatusType[] -
Call DescribeInstancesFullStatus to query the health status of all instances in a region.
For region IDs, see Regions and zones.
aliyun ecs DescribeInstancesFullStatus --RegionId TheRegionId --output cols=HealthStatus rows=InstanceFullStatusSet.InstanceFullStatusType[]
In the response, HealthStatus indicates the instance health status and Status indicates the lifecycle status.
-
Healthy instance: HealthStatus returns OK.
-
Unhealthy instance: HealthStatus returns a value other than OK.
For differences between health status and lifecycle status, see the Instance health status section.