All Products
Search
Document Center

:API overview

Last Updated:Dec 25, 2023

If you are familiar with network service protocols and one or more programming languages, we recommend that you use Elastic Compute Service (ECS) API to manage your cloud resources and develop your applications. This helps you directly interact with cloud services, automate management operations, and customize development workloads for flexible use.

Limits

Limits apply to your ECS resources such as instances, Elastic Block Storage (EBS) devices, security groups, snapshots, and public bandwidth. These limits vary based on your ECS usage. For more information, see Limits.

Instructions

ECS API supports HTTP or HTTPS requests. You can use the GET or POST method to send and receive requests. You can use one of the following tools to call ECS API operations:

  • Alibaba Cloud OpenAPI Explorer. You can use OpenAPI Explorer to call ECS API operations. For more information, visit OpenAPI Portal.

  • ECS SDKs. You can use ECS SDKs to call ECS API operations. For more information, see Install and use ECS SDKs.

  • Alibaba Cloud CLI. You can run the aliyun command in the shell command line to interact with Alibaba Cloud services and manage your Alibaba Cloud resources. For more information, see What is Alibaba Cloud CLI?

Note

When you call an API operation by using Alibaba Cloud CLI or SDKs, remove the periods (.) from request parameters. For example, use SystemDiskCategory instead of SystemDisk.Category as a request parameter.

For information about how to call API operations by using different tools, see Quick start.

Terms

Term

Parameter

Description

region

RegionId

An Alibaba Cloud data center. After you create a resource, its region cannot be changed.

zone

ZoneId

A physical location with independent power grids and networks within a region. Each region includes multiple zones. Resources in zones of the same region can communicate with each other over the internal network with faults isolated. The network latency for ECS instances within the same zone is low.

instance

InstanceId

A virtual machine virtualized from a physical server. It is the basic computing unit of ECS. For more information, see Overview of instance families.

reserved instance

ReservedInstanceId

A discount coupon that can be applied to pay-as-you-go instances (excluding preemptible instances) and provides a resource reservation for pay-as-you-go instances.

launch template

LaunchTemplateId

A launch template contains configurations that you can use to create instances. It can include any configurations such as a key pair, Resource Access Management (RAM) role, instance type, and network settings but cannot include passwords.

auto provisioning group

AutoProvisioningGroupId

A group used by Auto Provisioning to schedule and maintain compute resources. Auto Provisioning is a service used to deploy an instance cluster that consists of preemptible and pay-as-you-go instances. Auto Provisioning facilitates the deployment of instance clusters across different billing methods, zones, and instance families.

image

ImageId

A template that is pre-installed with an operating system and software configurations. System disks of new instances are the copies of images that are used to create the instances. You can use an image to create an instance or replace the system disk of an instance.

EBS device

DiskId

A storage device for Alibaba Cloud ECS. EBS devices are classified into cloud disks and local disks based on their performance and use scenarios.

security group

SecurityGroupId

A virtual firewall to control inbound and outbound traffic for ECS instances. An instance must belong to one or more security groups.

SSH key pair

KeyPairName

A combination of a public key and a private key. SSH key pairs are used to connect to ECS instances over the SSH protocol and are applicable only to Linux instances.

elastic network interface

NetworkInterfaceId

A logical networking component that represents a virtual network card in a virtual private cloud (VPC). Elastic network interfaces (ENIs) are applicable only to ECS instances within VPCs and can be bound to or unbound from the instances.

snapshot

SnapshotId

A point-in-time copy of a disk. Snapshots are taken for disks to restore disk data to a specific point in time. Snapshots can be used to restore disk data and create images.

tag

Tag.N.Key

A key-value pair. You can add tags to ECS resources for easy search and classification.

IP address

NatIPAddress

The public or private IP address of an ECS instance.

Cloud Assistant

CommandId

A built-in tool for ECS that provides O&M and deployment services. Cloud Assistant can automatically run batch, PowerShell, or shell commands to perform tasks on multiple instances at a time without establishing individual connections to these instances.