This topic describes the release notes of ECS features.

March 2020

Feature Description Release date Supported region Documentation
Local snapshots The local snapshot feature is released for free public preview in Singapore. 2020-03-18 Some Overview
Instance families The i2ne and i2gne instance families with local SSDs are released. 2020-03-11 All Instance families

February 2020

Feature Description Release date Supported region Documentation
Local snapshots The local snapshot feature is released for public preview in China (Hohhot). The number of supported regions is increasing. 2020-02-14 Some Overview

January 2020

Feature Description Release date Supported region Documentation
Tags A wide range of tag functions are provided. You can use tags to control permissions of RAM users. You can also bind and modify tags by using Operation Orchestration Service (OOS). 2020-01-03 All
Local snapshots The local snapshot feature is released for public preview. You can create local snapshots for ESSDs and restore a disk from a local snapshot within seconds. You can use the local snapshot feature for free during the public preview period. 2020-01-17 China (Hong Kong) Overview
Instance families The d2s storage intensive big data instance family is released. 2020-01-17 Some Instance families
Instance families The vgn6i lightweight compute optimized GPU-accelerated instance family is released. 2020-01-16 Some Instance families
Instance families The s6 shared standard instance family is released. 2020-01-16 Some Instance families
Images Technical support for the Windows Server 2008 and Windows Server 2008 R2 public images is discontinued. We recommend that you upgrade to Windows Server 2012 or later at your earliest convenience. 2020-01-14 All Overview

November 2019

Feature Description Release date Supported region Documentation
Tags The tag editor feature is released. You can use this feature to query up to 5,000 resource data entries across services and regions. You can also edit tags of the resources and export resource information. 2019-11-28 All Use the tag editor to manage resource tags
Snapshots The quota for automatic snapshots is increased to 1,000. 2019-11-15 All Overview
Instance families The gn6e compute optimized GPU-accelerated instance family is released. 2019-11-14 Some Instance families
Instance families The ebmgn6e compute optimized GPU-accelerated ECS Bare Metal Instance family is released. 2019-11-14 Some Instance families

October 2019

Feature Description Release date Supported region Documentation
Instance families The hfc6, hfg6, and hfr6 instance families with high clock speed are released. 2019-10-15 Some Instance families
Instance families The ebmhfc6, ebmhfg6, and ebmhfr6 ECS Bare Metal Instance families are released. 2019-10-10 All Instance families

September 2019

Feature Description Release date Supported region Documentation
Disk resizing
  • Standard SSDs and ultra disks can be resized to up to 32 TiB.
  • ESSDs can be resized online.
 2019-09-26 All
Instance families The ebmc6, ebmg6, and ebmr6 ECS Bare Metal Instance families are released. 2019-09-24 All Instance families
Instance families The t6 burstable instance family is released. 2019-09-12 Some Instance families
Security groups The maximum number of security group rules that can be contained in a security group is increased to 200. 2019-09-03 All Limits
Snapshots The individual quotas for manual snapshots and automatic snapshots are increased to 256. 2019-09-02 All Overview

August 2019

Feature Description Release date Supported region Documentation
Instance families The ebmgn6v compute optimized GPU-accelerated ECS Bare Metal Instance family is released. 2019-08-26 Some Instance families
Instance families The ebmgn6i compute optimized GPU-accelerated ECS Bare Metal Instance family is released. 2019-08-26 Some Instance families
Images The image export feature is available in all Alibaba Cloud regions. 2019-08-21 All Export a custom image
Snapshots The snapshot service is available for commercial use. All existing and new snapshots are billed on a pay-as-you-go basis. 2019-08-21 All Snapshot billing

July 2019

Feature Description Release date Supported region Documentation
Instance families The g6 general purpose instance family is released. 2019-07-30 Some Instance families
Instance families The c6 compute optimized instance family is released. 2019-07-30 Some Instance families
Instance families The r6 memory optimized instance family is released. 2019-07-30 Some Instance families
Instance families The ebmc5s compute optimized ECS Bare Metal Instance family with enhanced network performance is released. 2019-07-30 Some Instance families
Instance families The ebmg5s general purpose ECS Bare Metal Instance family with enhanced network performance is released. 2019-07-30 Some Instance families
Instance families The ebmr5s memory optimized ECS Bare Metal Instance family with enhanced network performance is released. 2019-07-30 Some Instance families

June 2019

Feature Description Release date Supported region Documentation
Auto provisioning Auto provisioning uses auto provisioning groups to schedule and maintain computing resources. This makes it easy to deploy clusters of instances across different billing methods, instance types, and zones. 2019-06-28 All Auto Provisioning overview
ESSDs The enhanced SSD service is available for commercial use after the public prereview. Three performance levels of ESSDs are released. 2019-06-28 Some. For more information about the supported regions, see Block Storage FAQ. Enhanced SSDs
vgn5i, a lightweight compute optimized GPU-accelerated instance family GRID drivers are provided for vgn5i instances. 2019-06-19 All

May 2019

Feature Description Release date Supported region Documentation
Block Storage Subscription disks can be created using API operations. 2019-05-15 All CreateDisk

April 2019

Feature Description Release date Supported region Documentation
Elastic network interfaces (ENIs) A single ENI supports multiple private IP addresses. 2019-04-28 All Assign a secondary private IP address
Block Storage You can resize data disks of an ECS instance by extending their capacities online to meet your storage requirements without restarting the instance. 2019-04-24 All Resize disks online (Linux)
Block Storage System disks can be resized. 2019-04-24 All Resize disks offline (Linux)
Snapshots Snapshots can be created for expired disks. 2019-04-20 All

March 2019

Feature Description Release date Supported region Documentation
Public images Aliyun Linux 2 public images are released. 2019-03-27 All Overview of Aliyun Linux 2
Instance families The gn6i compute optimized GPU-accelerated instance family is released. 2019-03-21 All Instance families
Instance families The sccgn6 compute optimized GPU-accelerated SCC instance family is released. 2019-03-20 All Instance families
Instance families The vgn5i lightweight compute optimized GPU-accelerated instance family is released. 2019-03-19 All Instance families
Reserved instances The reserved instance feature is in invitational preview. 2019-03-18 All Reserved instance overview
Cloud Assistant Cloud Assistant is available for ECS instances of the classic network type. 2019-03-01 All Install the Cloud Assistant client

January 2019

Feature Description Release date Supported region Documentation
Event notification Status change events and alert events for recycling of preemptible instances are supported. 2019-01-29 All System events

December 2018

Feature Description Release date Supported region Documentation
Cloud Assistant Cloud Assistant is available in the UK (London) region. 2018-12-31 All Cloud Assistant overview
Preemptible instances Preemptible instances are billed by second. 2018-12-17 All Preemptible instances
Instances The release protection feature is supported. 2018-12-14 All Instance release protection
ENIs The DescribeNetworkInterfaces operation can be used to query the public IP address that is attached to an ENI. 2018-12-04 All DescribeNetworkInterfaces

November 2018

Feature Description Release date Supported region Documentation
Custom images Packer can be used to create custom images. 2018-11-30 All Create a custom image by using Packer
Instance families The re4e memory optimized instance family with enhanced performance is released. 2018-11-30 All Instance families
Block Storage Subscription disks can be created separately and attached to subscription instances. 2018-11-29 All Create a subscription disk
Deployment sets The Alibaba Cloud deployment set feature is released. 2018-11-16 All Deployment set overview

October 2018

Feature Description Release date Supported region Documentation
Instance families The f3 compute optimized FPGA-accelerated instance family is released. 2018-10-31 All Instance families
API best practices API best practices are released in the ECS console. 2018-10-19 All Create an instance by using the provided wizard

September 2018

Feature Description Release date Supported region Documentation
t5, a burstable instance family The unlimited mode is available for the t5 burstable instance family. 2018-09-30 All Unlimited mode
Instance metadata Information of O&M system events is included in instance metadata. 2018-09-14 All Instance metadata
Instance health status The health status of each ECS instance is displayed on the instance details page. 2018-09-14 All View the health status of an instance
Instance families The gn6v new generation GPU-accelerated instance family (V100 model) is released. 2018-09-12 All Instance families
Instance purchase Multiple instances can be renewed at a time and historical instances can be purchased. 2018-09-07 All Manual renewal
System events API operations used to create or cancel simulated events are released. 2018-09-03 All
Billing methods A subscription instance can be converted to a pay-as-you-go instance. 2018-09-01 All Switch the billing method from Subscription to Pay-As-You-Go

August 2018

Feature Description Release date Supported region Documentation
Local disks The O&M of instances to which local disks are attached is optimized. 2018-08-31 All Local disks
Cloud Assistant Cloud Assistant is supported in the ECS console. 2018-08-17 All Cloud Assistant
Instance families SCC instance families are released. 2018-08-16 All Instance families

July 2018

Feature Description Release date Supported region Documentation
Custom images Images in the qcow2 format can be imported. 2018-07-30 All
Security groups Security group rules can be modified. 2018-07-25 All Modify security group rules
Tags Tags can be bound to resources when you create the resources. 2018-07-20 All Bind a tag
Instance families The ebmc4 compute optimized ECS Bare Metal Instance family is released. 2018-07-18 All Instance families
Snapshots The estimated remaining time for creating snapshots is displayed. 2018-07-17 All Create a normal snapshot
Account and user privileges Quota management is supported. 2018-07-15 All View quotas (old version)
ESSDs Enhanced SSD is in public preview in Beijing Zone G. 2018-07-14 Beijing Zone G Cloud disks overview
Instance troubleshooting System logs and screenshots can be viewed. 2018-07-13 All System logs and screenshots
Security groups You can submit a ticket to modify the maximum numbers of instances and security group rules that can be added to a security group. 2018-07-10 All Limits
Instance families The ic5 compute intensive instance family is released. 2018-07-09 All Instance families

June 2018

Feature Description Release date Supported region Documentation
Public images Operating systems including Red Hat can be selected from public images to create ECS instances. 2018-06-29 All Create an instance by using the provided wizard
Instance upgrade The configurations of pay-as-you-go instances can be upgraded or downgraded across instance families. 2018-06-15 All Instance type changes
Billing methods Subscription instances can be renewed on a weekly basis. 2018-06-12 All Manual renewal
Security groups Security groups in the classic network can be cloned to a VPC. 2018-06-06 All Clone a security group
Active O&M Phase 2 of active O&M is brought online. 2018-06-01 All Overview of system events

May 2018

Feature Description Release date Supported region Documentation
Custom images The image compliance tool is released. 2018-05-28 All Use the image compliance tool
System events ECS system events are migrated to Cloud Monitor and can be queried. 2018-05-25 All Overview of system events
Launch templates The feature of ECS instance launch template is released. 2018-05-11 All Create a launch template

April 2018

Feature Description Release date Supported region Documentation
Billing methods A pay-as-you-go instance can be converted to a subscription instance. 2018-04-23 All Switch the billing method from pay-as-you-go to subscription
Instance configuration downgrade Configurations of an expired subscription instance can be downgraded during renewal. 2018-04-13 All Downgrade instance configurations during renewal

March 2018

Feature Description Release date Supported region Documentation
GPU-accelerated instances The NVIDIA GPU Cloud (NGC) GPU-accelerated container is supported. 2018-03-28 All Deploy an NGC on gn5 instances
System events The system event feature is released. 2018-03-26 All Overview of system events
ECS Bare Metal Instance ECS Bare Metal Instance is released. 2018-03-14 All ECS Bare Metal Instance
Instance identifier The ECS instance identifier feature is released. 2018-03-01 All Instance identity

February 2018

Feature Description Release date Supported region Documentation
ECS API The API operation used to check whether the configurations of ECS instances can be upgraded or downgraded is supported. 2018-02-10 All DescribeResourcesModification
Subscription instances The number of days during which an instance stays expired before it is released is extended from 7 to 15. 2018-02-07 All Subscription
ECS API API operations used to create and query resources are released. 2018-02-02 All DescribeAvailableResource

December 2017

Feature Description Release date Supported region Documentation
No Fees for Stopped Instances (VPC-Connected) The No Fees for Stopped Instances (VPC-Connected) feature is available for pay-as-you-go instances. 2017-12-14 All No Fees for Stopped Instances (VPC-Connected)
ENIs The ENI feature is released. 2017-12-08 All ENI overview
FPGA-accelerated instance families The f1 compute optimized FPGA-accelerated instance family is released. 2017-12-02 All Instance families
ECS API The API operation used to create multiple instances at a time is released. 2017-12-01 All RunInstances
Instance troubleshooting The real-time diagnostics feature is supported in the ECS console. 2017-12-01 All Automatic diagnosis system

November 2017

Feature Description Release date Supported region Documentation
Cloud Migration Tool The Cloud Migration Tool is released. 2017-11-27 All Overview of the Cloud Migration tool
Security group rules Security group rules can be imported and exported. 2017-11-23 All Manage security group rules
Subscription instances The auto-renewal feature can be disabled for subscription instances. 2017-11-23 All ModifyInstanceAutoRenewAttribute
Billing methods API operations used to create and renew weekly subscription instances are released. 2017-11-03 All CreateInstance
Instance RAM roles RAM roles can be assigned to ECS instances. 2017-11-01 All Overview

October 2017

Feature Description Release date Supported region Documentation
EIPs The public IP address of an instance in a VPC can be converted to an EIP. 2017-10-31 All Convert an ECS public IP address to an EIP
Preemptible instances Preemptible Instance is released. 2017-10-18 All Overview
t5, a burstable instance family The t5 burstable instance family is released. 2017-10-09 All Overview

September 2017

Feature Description Release date Supported region Documentation
Billing methods Bills of pay-as-you-go instances and disks are accurate to the second and generated by hour. 2017-09-29 All Pay-as-you-go
gn5i, an instance family The gn5i compute optimized GPU-accelerated instance family is released. It is applicable to deep learning and online reasoning scenarios. 2017-09-23 All Instance families
ECS disk encryption ECS disks can be encrypted. 2017-09-05 All ECS disk encryption

August 2017

Feature Description Release date Supported region Documentation
Security group rules Security group rules can be configured based on the 5-tuple. 2017-08-31 All Security group quintuple rules
ClassicLink Instances in the classic network can be connected with instances in a VPC through ClassicLink. 2017-08-25 All Network types
Instance families The new-generation ECS instances with high clock speed and local SSD-based instances that are equipped with the Skylake processor and support 25 GE networks are released. 2017-08-22 All Instance families
ECS API The API operation used to change the bandwidth configurations of instances is released. 2017-08-17 All ModifyInstanceNetworkSpec
Custom images Custom images can be imported. 2017-08-10 All Import custom images

July 2017

Feature Description Release date Supported region Documentation
Images Technical support for the Windows Server 2003 public images is discontinued. We recommend that you upgrade to Windows Server 2012 or later at your earliest convenience. 2017-07-20 All Overview
Security groups Instances in a security group can be isolated based on a security group rule. 2017-07-07 All Isolation of instances within a security group

June 2017

Feature Description Release date Supported region Documentation
Classic network You cannot create classic network-type ECS instances for the first time after 12:00 (UTC+8) on June 16, 2017. We recommend that you use a VPC. 2017-06-16 All What is a VPC?

May 2017

Feature Description Release date Supported region Documentation
Instance RAM roles The API operation used to manage RAM roles of instances is released. 2017-05-26 All Use an instance RAM role by calling API operations
Instance families The network optimized instance family is released. 2017-05-23 All Instance families
Instance families The d1 storage intensive instance family is released. 2017-05-12 All Instance families
Security groups The default security group rule is modified to expose only ICMP ports, TCP port 22, and TCP port 3389. 2017-05-11 All Default rules of the default security group
Security groups Security groups can be backed up, overwritten, and restored. 2017-05-10 All Restore security group rules

April 2017

Feature Description Release date Supported region Documentation
SSH key pairs The SSH key pair feature is released. 2017-04-25 All Overview

February 2017

Feature Description Release date Supported region Documentation
Custom images cloud-init is available for some custom images. 2017-02-24 All Install cloud-init
Instance families The i1 I/O optimized instance family with local SSDs is released. 2017-02-17 All Instance families
Snapshots System disk snapshots can be used to create data disks. 2017-02-15 All Create a disk by using a snapshot
Instance families The gn4 compute optimized GPU-accelerated instance family is released. 2017-02-14 All Instance families

January 2017

Feature Description Release date Supported region Documentation
Instance families The ga1 visualization and compute optimized GPU-accelerated instance family is released. 2017-01-24 All Instance families
Instance families The se1 dedicated instance family is released. 2017-01-21 All Instance families

2016

Feature Description Release date Supported region Documentation
Snapshots Snapshot 2.0 is released. 2016-03-15 All Overview
Disk resizing The feature of resizing system disks is released. 2016-01-15 All Resize disks offline (Linux)

2015

Feature Description Release date Supported region Documentation
Custom images The feature of importing custom images is released. 2015-12-15 All Instructions for importing images
Security groups Security groups are supported in the ECS console. 2015-11-02 All Create a security group
Alibaba Cloud Marketplace images Alibaba Cloud Marketplace images are available for commercial use. 2015-09-02 All Alibaba Cloud Marketplace images
Tags The tag feature is released. 2015-08-20 All Overview
System disks The operating systems of pay-as-you-go instances can be replaced. 2015-08-13 All Replace the system disk (public images)
Custom images Custom images can be shared. 2015-05-15 All Shared images
Disk resizing Disks can be resized offline. 2015-04-20 All Overview
Custom images The image replication feature is released. 2015-01-26 All Copy custom images

2014

Feature Description Release date Supported region Documentation
Block Storage The independent disk feature is released. 2014-08-22 All Block Storage overview