Cloud Assistant provides plug-ins that allow you to maintain and manage ECS instances.

Background information

Cloud Assistant plug-in Description
Running method
  • Log on to the ECS instance through SSH and run commands. This method is applicable only to Linux ECS instances.
  • Use the Cloud Assistant console in the ECS console.
Use method
  • To query plug-ins, run the acs-plugin-manager --list command.
  • To run a specific plug-in, run the acs-plugin-manager --exec --plugin <Plugin name> command.
Usage example

Configure kdump

The ecs_dump_config plug-in can be used to enable and disable the dump feature, and query the status of the feature.

  • Enable dump.
    acs-plugin-manager --exec   --plugin=ecs_dump_config --params --enable
  • Disable dump.
    acs-plugin-manager --exec   --plugin=ecs_dump_config --params --disable
  • Query the status of dump.
    acs-plugin-manager --exec   --plugin=ecs_dump_config --params --status

Automatically configure an ENI

Typically, you must manually configure the network for an elastic network interface (ENI) after you add the ENI. The multi-nic-util plug-in can be used to automatically configure the network for your ENI. 

acs-plugin-manager  --exec   --plugin=multi-nic-util

Configure NIC multi-queue

NIC multi-queue enables an ECS instance to use multiple NIC queues to improve the packet forwarding rate and I/O performance. Each instance type supports up to a specific number of NIC queues. Performance bottlenecks may occur when vCPUs of an instance is used to process NIC interrupts. To solve this issue, NIC multi-queue spreads NIC interrupts to different CPUs for processing to achieve higher network performance. You can run the ethtool -l ehtname command to query the current number of NIC queues and the supported number of NIC queues.

The ecs_tools_multiqueue plug-in can be used to set the number of queues to the supported maximum number on all NICs. 

acs-plugin-manager  --exec   --plugin=ecs_tools_multiqueue

Manage Intel Hyper-Threading

ECS bare metal instances require Intel Hyper-Threading (HT) to be disabled for certain business scenarios. The ecs_disable_intel_hyper-threading plug-in can implement this feature.

To use this plug-in, you can add the nr_cpus kernel parameter to the grub file and set the parameter to half of the number of vCPUs of the instance type. Then the nr_cpus parameter limits the maximum number of vCPUs supported by the kernel and disables HT.

After the kernel parameter is configured, you must restart the instance for the parameter to take effect. After the plug-in is executed, the output will prompt you to restart the instance.

Note This plug-in cannot have HT disabled on ECS instances that are not ECS bare metal instances. If you run the plug-in on an instance that is not an ECS bare metal instance, the system prompts you that the instance is not an ECS bare metal instance and exits. 
acs-plugin-manager  --exec   --plugin=ecs_disable_intel_hyper-threading