What can a cloud server be used for? Inventory of 10 application scenarios of Aliyun ECS

In today's cloud computing and digital transformation, you must have heard the word "cloud server" countless times. But for many small and medium-sized business owners who have just come into contact with Internet development or plan to move their business to the cloud, there will inevitably be a question in their hearts:

Isn't this thing a remote computer that hangs on the Internet? What can it be used?

As a leader in the domestic cloud computing field, Aliyun's

ECS(Elastic Compute Service, Elastic Computing Service)

Is a typical representative of the cloud server. If the traditional physical server is compared to buying your own bicycle, then Aliyun ECS is like a shared car on call-you don't have to worry about maintenance, car repair, annual inspection, pay as you need, and you can run around the world as soon as you step on the accelerator.

Today, let's abandon those blunt technical terms and official documents and use the real writing style of pure vernacular to help you take a thorough inventory.

10 Core Application Scenarios of Alibaba Cloud ECS

. After reading this article, you can not only understand what it can do, but also directly find the landing wealth password that is most suitable for your business.

Scenario 1: Build enterprise official website, independent station and personal blog (the most basic just need)

This is the original intention of 80% of people buying their first cloud server.

Whether it is the company's corporate image official website, the cross-border e-commerce independent station (such as WordPress + WooCommerce) with cross-border orders, or the personal technology blog, it needs a place with 24-hour startup and public IP to store web page codes and pictures.

Why use ECS: Alibaba Cloud ECS provides extremely high data reliability and a multi-line BGP network. With the mature "pagoda panel" or one-click mirror image on the market, even if you don't know how to type the code, you can let users around the world visit your website smoothly within half an hour.

Scenario 2: Run various management systems (digital bone block of enterprise)

For enterprises with a little scale, there are always various management software in the interior:

ERP (enterprise resource planning), CRM (customer relationship management), OA office system, HRM (human resource management) or financial software.

In the past, the company needed to buy a computer and put it in the front desk or computer room. Once the power was cut off or the hard disk was broken, the whole company would be paralyzed.

Why use ECS: Deploy these systems on Aliyun ECS. Employees can log in to the system approval process and check inventory at any time as long as there is a network, whether they are working remotely from home or on high-speed rail. The data is automatically backed up in the cloud, and there is no need to worry about the tragedy of "the front desk computer crashes and all the data evaporates.

Scenario 3: Development and testing environment (programmer's "sandbox paradise")

For software development teams or independent developers, the most afraid thing is "running well on my computer, how to crash as soon as it goes online".

Why ECS: R & D teams can take advantage of ECS's fast cloning and volume-based billing features,

At any time to pull up a few sets and the production environment exactly the same test machine. After the code is finished, run a stress test or automated test in the ECS test environment. After the test is completed, a key to release (delete) the server.

Secrets of saving money: This scenario can be completely "billed by volume" (pay one hour for one hour), and there is no charge for power off work, and the cost is negligible.

4. Back-end API interface between WeChat applet and mobile App

Now everyone is using their mobile phones to brush various App and WeChat applets every day. Have you ever thought about who handles your request in the background when you click "login" or "place an order?

Why use ECS: The client of an App or applet is just a "front-end shell". All data calculation, core logic, and user authentication run on the back-end server. Aliyun ECS can perfectly adapt to various back-end development frameworks (such as Java Spring Boot, Go Gin, Node.js, etc.), and can seamlessly interface with WeChat ecology to ensure that your small programs will not get stuck in high concurrency.

Scene 5: Small and medium-sized online game clothing and online private clothing

The gaming industry is a high-frequency consumer of cloud servers.

Whether it's a back-end room suit for a small independent hand tour, or a game that requires a private server to be set up with friends, such as "Magic Beast Palu", "My World (Minecraft)" and "CS2", ECS is an excellent carrier.

Why use ECS: Online games require extremely high network latency (ping value) and CPU single-core performance. Aliyun has top-level high-defense and low-latency computer rooms in core cities in China (Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen, Hangzhou, etc.), which can ensure that players can release skills and synchronize coordinates smoothly without taking three steps.

Scenario 6: Big Data Analytics and Distributed Computing

When a business has accumulated massive amounts of user data, sales bills, or log files, the average office computer simply can't run complex analytics algorithms.

Why use ECS: You can open multiple highly configured ECS instances at one time and build your own Hadoop or Spark distributed cluster. Using the nearly unlimited computing power of the cloud, the financial statements or user portrait data that used to run for a few days can be shortened to a few minutes to help the company's management make accurate business decisions.

Scenario 7: AI and deep learning model training (GPU ECS)

In the past two years, the big model and generative AI have been completely on fire. If you want to train your own large vertical industry model, or do a lot of AI painting (Stable Diffusion), video rendering, ordinary CPU server is not animate.

Why use ECS: Alibaba Cloud ECS family has dedicated GPU instances. You don't need to go to the market and snap up those graphics cards that cost more than a hundred thousand at a high price, directly in ariyun.

The background rents GPU cloud servers by the hour. The environment is ready-made configuration (such as CUDA, PyTorch), that is, out-of-the-box, training on the shutdown, with the lowest cost to run the most cutting-edge AI business.

Scenario 8: Web crawler running with automated scripts

Many companies need to regularly go to the whole network to capture the industry market, competition prices, or need to run some fully automatic ticket snatching, snatching orders, and sending reports regularly.

Why use ECS: Your personal computer needs to be shut down and disconnected from work, while ECS can silently run your Python crawler or automated script in the background 24 hours a day. With Alibaba Cloud's ability to flexibly change public IP addresses, it can also effectively prevent the crawler from being interrupted due to IP blocking.

Scenario 9: Cross-border e-commerce multi-store anti-association management (financial and operational security)

For cross-border e-commerce cross-border sellers who do Amazon (Amazon), eBay, and Shopee, the platform has a very strict dead line:

It is strictly prohibited for one person to operate multiple similar stores (to prevent monopoly and malicious distribution)

. If the platform detects that two stores are logged in under the same IP, it will directly close the store (associated with the title).

Why use ECS: Many sellers will buy multiple cheap and low-priced ECS in Alibaba Cloud's overseas regions (such as Hong Kong, Singapore, and Silicon Valley in the United States). Each store is bound to a fixed public network IP of an ECS instance. Operators log on to ECS through remote desktop to manage stores. From the perspective of the platform, these stores are distributed on completely different physical lines, thus perfectly realizing physical isolation and anti-association and protecting asset security.

Scenario 10: High-availability and DR cluster (medium and large enterprise security line)

For industries such as finance, e-commerce, government and enterprises that "business cannot be stopped for a second", the risk of a single server is too high.

Why use ECS: Enterprises can use Aliyun ECS with "load balancing (SLB)" and "cloud database (RDS). Deploy the same service on multiple ECS instances. When node A falls down due to traffic surge or hardware failure, load balancing will instantly switch traffic to node B, and the user side will not even perceive any Catton at all. This is the bottom secret of Dachang Internet service "never offline.

Conclusion: How to choose your first ECS?

After reading these 10 scenes, do you find that cloud servers have long penetrated into all aspects of the Internet, whether it is personal tossing about technology or enterprises expanding their territory.

Finally, give the novice a sincere suggestion to avoid the pit:

According to the business to choose the configuration, do not blindly greedy.

If you just want to run a corporate official website, personal blog or small program interface,

Economical examples of 2-core 2G(2C2G) or 2-core 4G

It's completely enough, maybe 100 or 200 dollars a year. After the traffic increases, Aliyun supports it in the background.

One-click upgrade configuration without interrupting business and stopping

. Money to be spent on the blade, from the low match to do

From now on, with the outbreak of business and then dynamic expansion, this is the smartest posture to play with cloud computing.