Alibaba CSA-C01 key terms

A geographic area where Alibaba Cloud places data centers; resources in different regions are isolated from each other and generally must be connected over the internet or an Express Connect circuit.

An isolated data center or cluster of data centers within a region, with independent power and networking. Deploying across zones in one region improves fault tolerance and lowers latency.

Alibaba Cloud's virtual machine service. You choose an instance type, image, disk, and network configuration, and pay by subscription or pay-as-you-go.

A named ECS specification family that fixes the CPU-to-memory ratio and performance characteristics, such as general purpose, compute optimized, or memory optimized, along with the sizes available in it.

A template containing an operating system and optional preinstalled software used to create ECS instances. Images can be public, custom, shared from another account, or from the marketplace.

A stateful virtual firewall attached to ECS instances that allows or denies inbound and outbound traffic by protocol, port, and source or destination. Instances must belong to at least one group.

A service that automatically adds or removes ECS instances based on scaling rules, schedules, or alarm triggers, keeping capacity matched to demand while controlling cost.

A logical collection of ECS instances managed together by Auto Scaling, sharing minimum, maximum, and desired capacity settings, a launch template, and associated scaling rules.

A logically isolated private network you define with your own IP address range, subnets, route tables, and gateways, hosting Alibaba Cloud resources with controlled inbound and outbound connectivity.

A subnet within a VPC that has a CIDR block drawn from the VPC range and is bound to one zone. ECS instances and other resources are launched into a vSwitch.

A managed traffic distribution service that spreads incoming requests across backend servers using listeners, health checks, and scheduling algorithms, improving availability and throughput.

The frontend configuration of a load balancer that defines the protocol and port it accepts, such as HTTP on port 80, and the backend server group and health check it forwards to.

A periodic probe a load balancer sends to backend servers; servers that fail the configured check are removed from rotation until they pass again.

A managed domain name resolution service that maps domain names to IP addresses and supports record types, load balancing across addresses, and global traffic policies.

A DNS record that aliases one domain name to another canonical name instead of an IP address. It is commonly used to point a custom domain at a CDN or load balancer endpoint.

A distributed edge caching service that serves static and dynamic content from locations near users, reducing origin load and latency. Cached objects expire according to configured rules.

Alibaba Cloud's scalable object storage for unstructured data, organized into buckets that hold objects accessed by key over HTTP APIs, with storage classes and lifecycle rules.

A container for objects in OSS. Its name is globally unique, it is created in a specific region, and it carries access control, versioning, and lifecycle settings.

A policy on an OSS bucket that automatically transitions objects to cheaper storage classes or deletes them after a set number of days, reducing long-term storage cost.

A managed relational database service supporting engines such as MySQL, SQL Server, PostgreSQL, and MariaDB, handling backups, patching, and high availability for you.

A read-only replica of an RDS primary instance that offloads read queries and can be promoted if the primary fails. It is created in the same region as the primary.

A point-in-time copy of a disk's data used for backup or to create new disks and images. Snapshots are incremental and stored independently of the source disk.

A saved copy of data or configuration that can be restored after loss or corruption. Alibaba Cloud services offer automated and manual backups with configurable retention.

Alibaba Cloud's identity and access service for creating users, groups, and roles and granting them fine-grained permissions through policies, instead of sharing the primary account.

A JSON document that states which actions are allowed or denied on which resources, optionally under conditions. Policies attach to users, groups, or roles.

An identity without permanent credentials that trusted entities, such as ECS instances or other accounts, can assume to obtain temporary security tokens with defined permissions.

A temporary credential issued by Security Token Service, consisting of an access key ID, secret, and security token with a limited lifetime, commonly obtained by assuming a RAM role.

A long-term credential pair of an access key ID and secret used for programmatic API calls. Secrets must be protected and rotated, and RAM users should be used instead of the primary account.

Alibaba Cloud's monitoring service that collects metrics and events for cloud resources, displays dashboards, and sends alarm notifications when thresholds are breached.

A CloudMonitor configuration that evaluates a metric against a threshold over a period and triggers notifications or automated actions when the condition is met.

An audit service that records API calls made in your account, including who made each call, when, from where, and what the result was, supporting compliance and investigation.

A logical grouping of cloud resources within one account used to organize resources by project, team, or environment and to simplify permission and cost management.

A key-value label attached to resources for organization, filtering, and cost allocation, allowing bills and reports to be split by dimensions such as department or application.

A billing model where you pay upfront for a fixed term, typically one month to several years, usually at a lower price than on-demand for steady workloads.

A billing model where you are charged based on actual resource usage by hour or second with no long-term commitment, offering flexibility at a higher unit price.

A dedicated private network connection between an on-premises data center and an Alibaba Cloud VPC, offering more consistent bandwidth and lower latency than internet links.

A design approach that removes single points of failure by deploying redundant instances across zones, using load balancing, health checks, and automated failover to keep services running.