# Alibaba Cloud

> Alibaba Cloud is a public cloud with ECS, VPC and OSS services, managed with Terraform and OpenTofu through the alicloud provider.

- Source: https://www.itwonderlab.com/alibaba-cloud/
- Published: 2026-07-23
- Updated: 2026-07-23
- Author: Javier Ruiz Jiménez (https://www.javierruizjimenez.com/)
- Site: IT Wonder Lab (https://www.itwonderlab.com/)

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**Alibaba Cloud** is the public cloud of Alibaba Group. Its main services are **ECS** (virtual machines), **VPC** networks with vSwitches, **OSS** (object storage) and managed databases and Kubernetes. It runs an international site and a separate site for mainland China.

### Key concepts

- **RAM**: the identity service. Use RAM users and roles instead of the account owner AccessKey.
- **vSwitch**: the subnet of a VPC, always in one zone.
- **alicloud provider**: the [provider](https://www.itwonderlab.com/terraform-provider/) for Alibaba Cloud, published by Alibaba Cloud.

### Learn it

Follow [Terraform on Alibaba Cloud](https://www.itwonderlab.com/terraform-alibaba-cloud-getting-started/).