Cloud Wars: from sign-up to VM (1/6) | Alibaba Cloud

Team Reprise

Last Updated:
November 16, 2023

Chapter 3, Part 1: Alibaba Cloud

Introduction

Welcome to the third installment of Paul’s Tutorial Series! For this third chapter, I decided to compare Cloud Providers.

More specifically, I wanted to look at first user experience across them, so I decided to sign-up to 6 cloud providers, and capture my experience spinning up a free-tier VM right after sign up.

The (6) cloud providers I tested are, in alphabetical order:

This means that this third chapter of my tutorial series will have 6 parts, one for each cloud provider.

While I walk you through every part of this chapter, I will measure the following:

Configuration of the default VM offered in free tier
Approximate number of clicks needed from post-signup page to having a VM up and running
Number of screens needed in a replay to publish this tutorial
Spin-up time
Usability score (from my perspective, in a scale of 1 to 5)

Today’s Tutorial: Alicloud

So without further ado, here is the Alicloud tutorial:

Conclusion

Alibaba interface was super confusing to use for me. Maybe because I wasn’t redirected to the cloud console first? At any rate, here is the score card:

Config of default free tier VM	1 vCPU / 1GB RAM
Approximate number of clicks from signup to VM	20-25
Number of replay screens	19
Spin-up time	Not Sure
Paul’s usability score (1-5)	1