Help Center/ Elastic Cloud Server/ Service Overview/ Functions
Updated on 2025-10-31 GMT+08:00
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Functions

ECS provides the functions listed below. You can check if a certain function is available in a region on the console.

ECS Types and Specifications

An ECS is a basic computing unit that consists of vCPUs, memory, OS, and EVS disks.

After creating an ECS, you can use it like using your local computer or physical server, ensuring secure, reliable, and efficient computing. ECSs support self-service creation, modification, and operation. You can create an ECS by specifying its vCPUs, memory, OS, and login authentication. After the ECS is created, you can modify its specifications as required. This ensures a reliable, secure, efficient computing environment.

The cloud platform provides multiple ECS types for different computing and storage capabilities. One ECS type provides various flavors with different vCPU and memory configurations for you to select.

ECS Billing Modes

There are yearly/monthly, pay-per-use, and spot pricing billing modes. Each one has different advantages and disadvantages.

For more information, see Billing Modes.

ECS Purchase

ECSs are more cost-effective than physical servers. Within minutes, you can obtain elastic, scalable resources from the public cloud. You can purchase ECSs in the following ways:

  • Quick config

    The quick config mode provides basic, cost-effective, and high-performance instance specifications for you to choose from. You can specify the billing mode, region, image, public network access, and purchase details to quickly purchase ECSs.

  • Custom config

    You can flexibly specify parameters for ECSs based on your service scenarios.

For more information, see Introducing ECS Purchase Options.

Hyper-Threading

When purchasing an x86 ECS, you can enable or disable hyper-threading by specifying CPU options. If you do not specify it, hyper-threading is enabled by default.

For x86 ECSs that support hyper-threading:
  • If you require CPU cores to concurrently process a large amount of data and background tasks, enabling hyper-threading can greatly improve computing performance.
  • For compute-intensive or high-performance computing (HPC) applications, such as computational materials science, disabling hyper-threading is a better choice.

For more information, see Enabling or Disabling Hyper-Threading.

Scheduled Instance Deletion

You can set a scheduled deletion time when purchasing a pay-per-use ECS. The system will delete the ECS at the specified time.

Deleted ECSs cannot be recovered. You are advised to back up data before deleting ECSs.

For more information, see Purchasing an ECS in Custom Config Mode.

Sequential ECS Names

When purchasing multiple ECSs, you can arrange ECS names in sequential order in either of the following ways:

  • Automatic naming: The system automatically numbers ECSs with a four-digit suffix in ascending order.
  • Custom naming: You can create a custom naming rule using the format "name_prefix[begin_number,bits]name_suffix". The system will name the ECSs based on the rule you specify.

For more information, see How Can I Set Sequential ECS Names When Creating Multiple ECSs?

Password Reset

You can reset the password in any of the following scenarios:
  • The password is lost.
  • The password has expired.
  • You intend to change the initial password at the first login.
  • You selected Set password later or Key pair for Login Mode during ECS purchase.

For more information, see Overview of Password Reset.

ECS Login

Data Disk Initialization

After you attach a new data disk to a server, you must initialize the disk including creating partitions, creating file systems, and mounting the partitions before you can use the disk.

For more information, see Initializing Data Disks.

Specification Modification

If the ECS specifications cannot meet service requirements, you can modify the specifications by upgrading the vCPUs and memory.

For more information, see Modifying ECS Specifications.

OS Change

Changing an ECS OS will change the system disk attached to the ECS. After the change, the system disk ID of the ECS will be changed, and the original system disk will be deleted.

The cloud platform supports changing between image types (public images, private images, and shared images) and between OSs. You can change your OS by changing your ECS image.

For more information, see Changing the OS.

OS Reinstallation

If the OS of an ECS fails to start or requires optimization, reinstall the OS.

For more information, see Reinstalling the OS.

Image Creation

You can use an existing ECS to create a system disk image, data disk image, and full-ECS image.
  • System disk image: contains an OS and application software for running services. You can use a system disk image to create ECSs and migrate your services to the cloud.
  • Data disk image: contains only service data. You can use a data disk image to create EVS disks and migrate your service data to the cloud.
  • Full-ECS image: contains all the data of an ECS, including the data on the data disks attached to the ECS. A full-ECS image can be used to rapidly create ECSs with service data.
  • ISO image: is created from an external ISO image file. It is a special image that can only be used to create temporary ECSs.

For more information, see Creating an Image.

Disk Management

Elastic Volume Service (EVS) offers scalable block storage for ECSs. With high reliability, high performance, and rich specifications, EVS disks can be used for distributed file systems, development and test environments, data warehouses, and high-performance computing (HPC) scenarios to meet diverse service requirements.

You can add and attach disks to ECSs, and expand disk capacity when necessary.

For more information, see Disk Overview.

Elastic Network Interface Management

An elastic network interface (referred to as a network interface in this documentation) is a virtual network card. You can create and configure network interfaces and attach them to your cloud servers (such as ECSs and BMSs) to obtain flexible and highly available network configurations.

For more information, see Network Interface Overview.

EIP Management

Elastic IP (EIP) provides independent public IP addresses and bandwidth for Internet access. EIPs can be bound to or unbound from ECSs, BMSs, NAT gateways, virtual IP addresses, and load balancers. Various billing modes are provided to meet different service requirements.

You can bind, unbind, or change EIPs for ECSs. If the bandwidth of an EIP does not meet your service requirements, you can adjust the bandwidth.

For more information, see EIP Overview.

Security Group Management

A security group is a collection of access control rules for ECSs that have the same security protection requirements and that are mutually trusted. After a security group is created, you can create various access rules for the security group, these rules will apply to all ECSs added to this security group.

When creating an ECS, you must associate it with a security group. If no security group has been created yet, a default security group will be automatically created and associated with the ECS. You can also create a security group based on service requirements and associate it with the ECS. An ECS can be associated with multiple security groups, and traffic to and from the ECS is matched by priority in descending order.

For more information, see Security Group Overview.

Host Security

Host Security Service (HSS) is designed to protect server workloads in hybrid clouds and multi-cloud data centers. It integrates server security, container security, and web tamper protection capabilities. HSS protects your system integrity, enhances application security, monitors user operations, and detects intrusions.

For more information, see HSS.

ECS Data Backup

Cloud Backup and Recovery (CBR) enables you to back up cloud servers and disks with ease. In case of a virus attack, accidental deletion, or software or hardware fault, you can restore data to any point in the past when the data was backed up.

For more information, see CBR Overview.

Self-Service O&M

To simplify ECS O&M operations, reduce the O&M impact on services, and improve O&M efficiency, ECS provides functions such as submitting commands without login and configuring DNS servers in just one click.

For more information, see Self-Service O&M.

Tag Management

A tag identifies an ECS. Adding tags to an ECS facilitates ECS identification and management.

For more information, see Tag Management Overview.

Quota Adjustment

Quotas can limit the number or amount of resources available to users, such as the maximum number of ECS or EVS disks that can be created.

If the existing resource quota cannot meet your service requirements, you can apply for a higher quota.

For more information, see Quota Adjustment.

ECS Monitoring

Monitoring is key for ensuring ECS performance, reliability, and availability. Using monitored data, you can determine ECS resource utilization. The cloud platform provides Cloud Eye to help you obtain the running statuses of your ECSs. You can use Cloud Eye to automatically monitor ECSs in real time and manage alarms and notifications to keep track of ECS performance metrics.

For more information, see Monitoring ECSs.

Traces

Cloud Trace Service (CTS) records operations on cloud resources in your account. You can use the logs to perform security analysis, track resource changes, audit compliance, and locate faults. After you enable CTS, CTS starts to record operations on your ECSs. You can check the records generated over the last seven days on the CTS console.

For more information, see Viewing Traces.

APIs

APIs for ECS include native OpenStack APIs and ECS APIs. ECS APIs are recommended.

For more information, see API Overview.

SDKs

With ECS SDKs, you can call ECS APIs to create applications easily on Huawei Cloud.

Currently, SDKs are available in Java, Python, Go, Node.Js, .NET, PHP, and C++. You can use APIs or any of the SDKs you are familiar with.

For more information, see SDK Overview.