You can call ECS API operations by sending HTTP or HTTPS GET requests based on URLs. Each URL must contain request parameters. This topic describes the syntax of HTTP or HTTPS GET requests and provides the endpoints of Elastic Compute Service (ECS) API.

Sample request

The following example shows an unencoded URL request to call the CreateSnapshot operation: 

https://ecs.aliyuncs.com/?Action=CreateSnapshot
&DiskId=d-28m5zbu****
&<Common request parameters>
  • https specifies the protocol that is used to transmit the request.
  • ecs.aliyuncs.com specifies the endpoint of ECS.
  • Action=CreateSnapshot specifies the API operation to call. DiskId=d-28m5zbu**** is a request parameter for CreateSnapshot.
  • <Common request parameters> are common parameters defined in the system.

Protocols

You can send requests over HTTP or HTTPS. For security purposes, we recommend that you send requests over HTTPS.

If requests contain sensitive data such as passwords and SSH key pairs, we recommend that you use HTTPS. For example, if you want to specify the Password parameter when you call the CreateInstance operation, you can send a request over HTTPS to ensure data security.

Endpoints

The following table describes the endpoints of ECS API. To minimize the network latency, we recommend that you specify the endpoint based on the region where you make API requests.

  • IPv4 endpoints
    Region Endpoint
    China (Hangzhou) (Central region) ecs.aliyuncs.com
    Note Global acceleration is enabled for ecs.aliyuncs.com. This can reduce the network latency caused by traffic forwarding across countries or regions. You can use this endpoint when you want to make API requests from countries or regions outside the Chinese mainland.
    China (Zhangjiakou) ecs.cn-zhangjiakou.aliyuncs.com
    China (Hohhot) ecs.cn-huhehaote.aliyuncs.com
    China (Ulanqab) ecs.cn-wulanchabu.aliyuncs.com
    China (Heyuan) ecs.cn-heyuan.aliyuncs.com
    China (Guangzhou) ecs.cn-guangzhou.aliyuncs.com
    Japan (Tokyo) ecs.ap-northeast-1.aliyuncs.com
    Australia (Sydney) ecs.ap-southeast-2.aliyuncs.com
    Malaysia (Kuala Lumpur) ecs.ap-southeast-3.aliyuncs.com
    Indonesia (Jakarta) ecs.ap-southeast-5.aliyuncs.com
    India (Mumbai) ecs.ap-south-1.aliyuncs.com
    UAE (Dubai) ecs.me-east-1.aliyuncs.com
    Germany (Frankfurt) ecs.eu-central-1.aliyuncs.com
    UK (London) ecs.eu-west-1.aliyuncs.com
  • IPv4/IPv6 dual-stack endpoints
    Region Endpoint
    China (Hangzhou) (Central region) ecs-dualstack.aliyuncs.com
    China (Shanghai) ecs-dualstack.cn-shanghai.aliyuncs.com 
    China (Qingdao) ecs-dualstack.cn-qingdao.aliyuncs.com 
    China (Beijing) ecs-dualstack.cn-beijing.aliyuncs.com
    China (Zhangjiakou) ecs-dualstack.cn-zhangjiakou.aliyuncs.com 
    China (Hohhot) ecs-dualstack.cn-huhehaote.aliyuncs.com 
    China (Ulanqab) ecs-dualstack.cn-wulanchabu.aliyuncs.com 
    China (Shenzhen) ecs-dualstack.cn-shenzhen.aliyuncs.com
    China (Heyuan) ecs-dualstack.cn-heyuan.aliyuncs.com 
    China (Guangzhou) ecs-dualstack.cn-guangzhou.aliyuncs.com 
    China (Chengdu) ecs-dualstack.cn-chengdu.aliyuncs.com 
    China (Hong Kong) ecs-dualstack.cn-hongkong.aliyuncs.com 
Note ECS provides public endpoints. If your ECS instance does not have a public bandwidth or a public IP address, you cannot use tools such as Alibaba Cloud CLI or SDKs to make API requests for the instance. If you want to call API operations on ECS instances in virtual private clouds (VPCs) that cannot access the Internet, you can call the API operations over the internal network. For more information, see Call API operations over the internal network.

Request parameters

You must use the Action parameter to specify the API operation that you want to call. For example, set Action to StartInstance to call the StartInstance operation. You must also specify other operation-specific request parameters and common request parameters. For more information, see Common parameters.

Encoding

All requests and responses are encoded in UTF-8.