Help Center/ Elastic Cloud Server/ API Reference (Paris Regions)/ Before You Start
Updated on 2025-01-07 GMT+08:00
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Before You Start

Overview

Welcome to Elastic Cloud Server API Reference. An Elastic Cloud Server (ECS) is an easy-to-obtain, elastically scalable compute server that consists of a CPU, memory, image, and EVS disks. An ECS can work with a Virtual Private Cloud (VPC), virtual firewall, and multiple copies of data to build an efficient, reliable, and secure computing environment to let your services run stably. After creating an ECS, you can use it like using your local computer or physical server.

This document describes ECS application programming interfaces (APIs), including description, syntax, parameters, and examples. For details about all supported operations, see API Overview.

If you plan to access ECSs through an API, ensure that you are familiar with ECS concepts. For details, see "Service Overview" in the Elastic Cloud Server User Guide.

API Calling

ECSs support Representational State Transfer (REST) APIs, allowing you to call APIs using HTTPS. For details about API calling, see Calling APIs.

Endpoints

An endpoint is the request address for calling an API. Endpoints vary depending on services and regions. For the endpoints of all services, see Regions and Endpoints.

Constraints

  • The number of ECSs that you can create is determined by your quota. To view or increase the quota, see "Quota Adjustment" in Elastic Cloud Server User Guide.
  • For more constraints, see the API description.

Concepts

  • Account

    An account is created upon successful signing up. The account has full access permissions for all of its cloud services and resources. It can be used to reset user passwords and grant user permissions. The account is a payment entity, which should not be used directly to perform routine management. For security purposes, create Identity and Access Management (IAM) users and grant them permissions for routine management.

  • User

    An IAM user is created by an account in IAM to use cloud services. Each IAM user has its own identity credentials (password and access keys).

    API authentication requires information such as the account name, username, and password.

  • Region

    A region is a geographic area in which cloud resources are deployed. Availability zones (AZs) in the same region can communicate with each other over an intranet, while AZs in different regions are isolated from each other. Deploying cloud resources in different regions can better suit certain user requirements or comply with local laws or regulations.

  • AZ

    An AZ comprises of one or more physical data centers equipped with independent ventilation, fire, water, and electricity facilities. Computing, network, storage, and other resources in an AZ are logically divided into multiple clusters. AZs within a region are interconnected using high-speed optical fibers to allow you to build cross-AZ high-availability systems.

  • Project

    A project corresponds to a region. Default projects are defined to group and physically isolate resources (including computing, storage, and network resources) across regions. Users can be granted permissions in a default project to access all resources under their accounts in the region associated with the project. If you need more refined access control, create subprojects under a default project and create resources in subprojects. Then you can assign users the permissions required to access only the resources in the specific subprojects.

    Figure 1 Project isolation model