Alibaba Cloud is a cloud computing service that is provided by the Alibaba Group. Alibaba Cloud’s services are geared toward online businesses. These services include Elastic Compute Service, Elastic Block Storage, Auto Scaling, and Elastic GPU Service. Its international operations are registered in Singapore. The cloud services are offered to international businesses, as well as to Alibaba’s own ecosystem of e-commerce companies.
Elastic Compute Service
Alibaba Cloud’s Elastic Compute Service (ECS) can provide instant scalability for your application. This cloud infrastructure features fast memory and the latest Intel CPUs. It also offers low latency and is protected from DDoS attacks. Alibaba Cloud ECS instances can be deployed in a few clicks and can be scaled up or down based on real-time demands. A major benefit of Alibaba Cloud ECS is that it eliminates the need for expensive IT infrastructure and hiring large network teams.
The ECS is designed to support a diverse set of workloads. It can support web, application, and test scenarios. It also provides bare metal servers for businesses that require higher-performance computing. The service can scale to meet business needs and support a variety of industries.
Elastic Block Storage
Alibaba Cloud’s Elastic Block Storage provides an independent solution for block storage. The platform supports automated scaling within seconds, which helps businesses cope with sudden traffic spikes. It also offers up to one million IOPS, far above the average of the industry. However, there are some important limitations to using Alibaba Cloud’s Elastic Block Storage.
Alibaba Cloud offers two payment options: pay-as-you-go and subscription. The pay-as-you-go option allows users to pay for only the resources they use, so this option is best suited for use cases with erratic traffic. The subscription option requires upfront payments over a predefined billing period. The subscription option is ideal for long-term use in applications.
Auto Scaling
Auto Scaling is an important part of the cloud platform. It helps you automatically adjust the amount of elastic computing resources available to you based on the current usage. Auto scaling is possible in several modes, including fixed, dynamic, and scheduled modes. Fixed mode allows you to specify when an auto-scaling operation should occur, and scheduled mode allows you to specify a certain time when it should occur.
You can configure Auto Scaling by defining the number of instances in a scaling group. You can define a maximum number of instances, minimum instance size, and instance configuration source for different scaling groups. If you want to use Auto Scaling for your Application Load Balancer servers, you can define a specific group of instances. You can even create multiple scaling groups to accommodate different workloads.
Elastic GPU Service
The Elastic GPU Service provides GPU-based compute resources for your workload. It is aimed at deep learning, scientific computing, and visualization workloads. The service is built on the latest hardware from NVIDIA. It uses AMD FirePro S7150 GPUs and NVIDIA Tesla M40, P100, and V10 GPUs. In addition, the service offers comprehensive monitoring.
The service is available in two pricing options: Pay-as-you-go and subscription. There is an API to automate certain processes. The archive option provides access to archived data. The service also includes a GPU bot, which is currently in development. This feature allows users to automate repetitive tasks and free up team resources for more important tasks.
Elastic High Performance Computing
Elastic High Performance Computing is the process of deploying a large-scale, high-performance computing system in the cloud. This type of service is suitable for a variety of applications. In the case of drug discovery, for example, high-performance computing is a key requirement. For this purpose, Alibaba Cloud has the right technologies. It supports GPU hosts, cloud supercomputing, and AI.
Elastic Cloud services provide an extremely reliable platform for large-scale data center applications. Alibaba Cloud is committed to expanding its cloud services globally. It recently expanded its operations in Europe and the USA and introduced eight products specifically for the overseas market. These include big data, AI, security, and private cloud solutions. According to a recent report by RightScale, 2% of enterprises are currently using Alibaba Cloud to run their workloads. Another 5% plan to use it in the near future.