Deploy Full Stack Then Protect Data

Scenario

Use this workflow when deploying a production-grade web stack that requires infrastructure-as-code provisioning, immediate security hardening, and automated disaster recovery. It is ideal for teams that need to baseline Alibaba Cloud Linux performance via Terraform and enforce zero-touch, consistent disk protection across ECS fleets.

Integration steps

1. Provision Infrastructure via Terraform: Run terraform init && terraform apply using modules for VPC, ECS cluster, RDS, OSS, and SLB. Pass your CAS-managed SSL certificate ARN to the SLB HTTPS listener configuration.
2. Deploy Alinux Fleet with Cloud Assistant: Launch instances with the assistant pre-enabled for remote operations:

``bash aliyun ecs RunInstances --RegionId cn-hangzhou --InstanceType ecs.c7.large \ --ImageId aliyun_3_x64_20G_alibase_20231215.vhd --Amount 3 \ --SecurityGroupId sg-xxxx --VSwitchId vsw-xxxx --InternetMaxBandwidthOut 5 ``

3. Apply Hardening & Performance Baselines: Use Cloud Assistant (ecs-execute-instances) to push kernel tuning and security patches:

``bash aliyun ecs InvokeCommand --CommandContent "sysctl -w net.core.somaxconn=1024 && yum update -y alinux-release" \ --InstanceIds '["i-xxxx", "i-yyyy"]' --Type RunShellScript ``

4. Configure Automatic Snapshot Policies: Create a recurring backup policy for system and data disks:

``bash aliyun ecs CreateAutoSnapshotPolicy --RegionId cn-hangzhou \ --RetentionDays 30 --TimePoints '["02:00"]' --RepeatWeekdays '["1","2","3","4","5"]' ` Attach it to target volumes using ApplyAutoSnapshotPolicy`.

5. Establish Snapshot-Consistent Groups: Guarantee crash-consistent recovery across app and data disks:

``bash aliyun ecs CreateDiskBackupConsistencyGroup --RegionId cn-hangzhou \ --Name "prod-web-consistent" --DiskIds '["d-xxxx", "d-yyyy"]' ``

6. Validate & Baseline: Trigger a manual CreateSnapshot and run Alinux performance diagnostics to verify IOPS, network latency, and CPU steal time align with your tuning parameters.

Architecture

Terraform orchestrates the control plane, provisioning VPC networking, ECS compute nodes, RDS databases, OSS buckets, and an SLB frontend. CAS terminates SSL at the SLB, forwarding decrypted traffic to ECS. Alibaba Cloud Linux runs on the instances, receiving hardened configurations via the Cloud Assistant agent. ECS Backup and Snapshot services operate at the block-storage layer, attaching automatic policies and consistency groups directly to disks to ensure point-in-time DR without impacting runtime application traffic.

Prerequisites

• Alibaba Cloud CLI (aliyun) and Terraform v1.5+ installed and authenticated
• RAM roles with AliyunECSFullAccess, AliyunVPCFullAccess, AliyunRDSFullAccess, AliyunOSSFullAccess, and AliyunCASReadOnlyAccess
• Pre-registered domain and validated CAS SSL certificate
• Cloud Assistant agent pre-installed on the target Alinux base image

Common pitfalls

• Inconsistent multi-disk backups: Relying on independent automatic snapshots instead of CreateDiskBackupConsistencyGroup causes transactional corruption across application and data volumes during restore.
• Cloud Assistant agent missing: Deploying a custom image without the pre-installed agent blocks InvokeCommand execution, halting the hardening pipeline.
• SLB-CAS certificate mismatch: Failing to bind the correct CAS certificate ID to the SLB HTTPS listener results in TLS handshake failures despite a successful Terraform apply.
• Snapshot retention conflicts: Overlapping retention rules between manual and automatic policies can prematurely delete critical recovery points if RetentionDays is misconfigured or policies target the same disk ID.

Typical questions

• deploy full stack then set up backups and snapshots
• provision production infra and protect data
• terraform deploy then configure automatic snapshots
• deploy secure web stack then set up disaster recovery
• provision ECS cluster and configure data protection
• 部署全栈后配置快照和备份策略
• Terraform部署生产环境后设置数据保护
• deploy hardened stack then configure DR

Q: How do I deploy a full production stack and configure data protection? A: You should use Terraform to provision a hardened production web stack and then configure comprehensive ECS data protection for disaster recovery readiness. This process involves deploying VPCs, ECS clusters, OSS, SLB with SSL, and RDS with security hardening, followed by enabling automatic snapshots, disk backup policies, and snapshot-consistent groups.