This article was created in partnership with Alibaba Cloud. Thank you for supporting the partners who make SitePoint possible.

本文是与阿里云合作创建的。 感谢您支持使SitePoint成为可能的合作伙伴。

Cloud computing allows you to use computer services such as servers, databases, analytics and more over the internet using virtual machines.

云计算使您可以使用虚拟机通过Internet使用计算机服务，例如服务器，数据库，分析等。

The idea has been around since the inception of the Internet, but it really began to take off when Amazon launched its Elastic Compute Cloud in 2006, which later became known as Amazon Web Services, or AWS. Many other competitors have entered the market since then as cloud computing has blossomed into a huge growth industry.

自从Internet诞生以来，这个想法就一直存在，但是当Amazon于2006年推出其Elastic Compute Cloud(后来称为Amazon Web Services或AWS)时，它才真正开始兴起。 此后，随着云计算蓬勃发展成一个巨大的增长行业，许多其他竞争者进入了市场。

Cloud Computing providers allow you to host websites and applications, store data and assets, run software as a service applications, provide on-demand services such as streaming videos, photo backup and storage and even use artificial intelligence services.

云计算提供商允许您托管网站和应用程序，存储数据和资产，将软件作为服务应用程序运行，提供按需服务，例如流视频，图片备份和存储，甚至使用人工智能服务。

One of the key benefits of cloud computing is that as you only pay for what you use, in a similar way that you pay for gas or electricity. You can almost think of it as ‘renting’ a server located ‘in the cloud’. This makes it a very inexpensive way of gaining access to multiple high-end servers, running the latest software without the cost and hassle of running the actual servers yourself.

云计算的主要优势之一是，您只需为使用的商品付费，就像您为天然气或电付费一样。 您几乎可以将其视为“租用”位于“云中”的服务器。 这使其成为访问多个高端服务器，运行最新软件的非常廉价的方式，而无需花费成本和麻烦即可自行运行实际的服务器。

Another advantage of cloud computing is elastic scaling, which is the ability to increase or decrease the amount of computing power that your service uses, as and when required, using load balancers. This allows you to launch your service without the need big up-front investment and helps to take some of the risk out of launching a new service, while still allowing for expansion in the future. For example, Alibaba Cloud features a load balancer that can use shared resources, but also switch to guaranteed performance instances when required.

云计算的另一个优势是弹性扩展，这是一种能力，可以在需要时使用负载平衡器来增加或减少服务使用的计算能力。 这使您无需大量的前期投资就可以启动服务，并有助于消除启动新服务的部分风险，同时仍可以在将来进行扩展。 例如， 阿里云具有负载均衡器，该负载均衡器可以使用共享资源，但也可以在需要时切换到保证性能的实例 。

Cloud computing providers also make it easy to set up and deploy both ready-made and custom builds of virtual machines using a variety of operating systems. You can spin up a new instance and have it running in a matter of minutes. Virtual servers don’t require any management and are able to take advantage of a huge infrastructure with servers located globally means that people can access your site from around the world without having to worry about latency issues. Their distributed nature means that there isn’t a single point of failure, making them extremely reliable with an uptime of virtually 100%. Backup and recovery are also baked into the service, so you don’t need to worry about data loss. There’s no need for IT administrators here!

云计算提供商还可以轻松使用各种操作系统来设置和部署现成和自定义的虚拟机。 您可以启动一个新实例，并在几分钟内使它运行。 虚拟服务器不需要任何管理，并且能够利用庞大的基础架构将服务器置于全球，这意味着人们可以从世界各地访问您的站点，而不必担心延迟问题。 它们的分布式特性意味着不会出现单点故障，从而使它们极其可靠，并且正常运行时间几乎达到100％。 备份和恢复也包含在服务中，因此您不必担心数据丢失。 这里不需要IT管理员！

In this post we’re going to take a look at 3 of the big providers – AWS, Alibaba Cloud and Digital Ocean – and compare them using the following criteria:

在这篇文章中，我们将研究3个大型提供商– AWS ， 阿里云和Digital Ocean –并使用以下标准进行比较：

• Services offered提供的服务
• Pricing价钱
• Help & Support帮助支持

All three services have a very similar offering, but do it in slightly different ways. Hopefully this post will help you decide which one is the right fit for you.

所有这三种服务都有非常相似的产品，但是方式略有不同。 希望这篇文章可以帮助您确定哪一个最适合您。

认识竞争对手 (Meet The Competitors)

Amazon Web Services, or AWS, is the big daddy of cloud computing. Launched in 2006, it now has an impressively vast array of services on offer and is the clear leader in the field. When you first log into AWS, you get the familiar feel Amazon’s website – it’s almost as if you’re just buying something else from their store. Initially, the sheer number of options can be quite overwhelming.

亚马逊网络服务 (AWS)是云计算的老爸。 它于2006年推出，现在提供大量令人印象深刻的服务，并且是该领域的明显领导者。 首次登录AWS时，您会感到熟悉的亚马逊网站-好像您只是从他们的商店购买其他商品一​​样。 最初，纯粹的选择数量可能是非常庞大的。

Alibaba are often referred to as the ‘Chinese Amazon’. They launched Alibaba Cloud in 2009 as a direct competitor to AWS, with a focus on Asian markets. It has grown significantly since then and is now the largest cloud provider in China. In 2017 they were named the official cloud services provider of the Olympics and this year they received the MySQL Corporate Contributor Award in recognition of their contributions to open source. Alibaba Cloud are really ramping up their offering in 2018, and recently made a commitment to invest $15 billion over the next 3 years into their already impressive cloud computing service. When you log into Alibaba Cloud, you notice that it has a modern and professional feel to it. They also offer a mind-boggling number of options that can seem a bit daunting at first.

阿里巴巴通常被称为“中国亚马逊”。 他们于2009年推出了阿里云 ，作为AWS的直接竞争对手，重点是亚洲市场。 从那时起，它就取得了长足的发展，现在是中国最大的云提供商。 在2017年，他们被任命为奥运会的官方云服务提供商，今年，他们获得了MySQL企业贡献奖，以表彰他们对开源的贡献。 阿里云确实在2018年增加其产品，并最近承诺在未来3年内向其已经令人印象深刻的云计算服务投资150亿美元。 登录阿里云时，您会注意到它具有现代和专业的感觉。 它们还提供了令人难以置信的众多选择，乍一看似乎有些令人生畏。

Digital Ocean started life in 2012 with the aim of making it easy for developers to build applications in the cloud. My first impressions of their site was that it has a clean look and user-friendly design. They also use the concept of ‘Droplets’ that are virtual machines at various price points. This fits the theme of the company by reimagining the cloud as a digital ocean where each virtual machine is droplet in a digital ocean. This approach certainly makes it simpler to get started without having to wade through a vast number of options.

Digital Ocean于2012年投入使用，其目的是使开发人员轻松在云中构建应用程序。 我对他们的网站的第一印象是它具有简洁的外观和人性化的设计。 他们还使用“小滴”的概念，它们是处于不同价位的虚拟机。 这通过reimagining 云作为数字海洋 ，每个虚拟机是数字海洋液滴符合公司的主题。 当然，这种方法使入门变得更简单，而不必花很多时间进行选择。

提供的服务 (Services Offered)

All 3 Cloud Computing providers in our roundup provide a similar offering in terms of the basic provision. This includes:

我们在综述中的所有3家云计算提供商在基本条款方面都提供了类似的服务。 这包括：

• The ability to create virtual machines with multiple cores and up to 256GB of RAM创建具有多个内核和高达256GB RAM的虚拟机的能力
• The ability to create custom images that can be recreated on demand创建自定义图像的能力，可以按需重新创建
• Load Balancing负载均衡
• Content Delivery Networks内容交付网络
• Firewall including protection from Trojans and DDOS attacks防火墙，包括木马和DDOS攻击防护
• Snapshots & backups with built-in redundancy具有内置冗余的快照和备份
• An API so that other services and developers can interact with resources hosted in the cloud一个API，以便其他服务和开发人员可以与云中托管的资源进行交互

All the services are easy to set up and have nice UIs, but AWS and Alibaba can look a bit complicated at times, with buttons, sliders and knobs all over the place! This is simply due to the fact that they have so many more options to choose from. Digital Ocean keeps things simple, which makes for a more pleasant user experience when setting things up.

所有服务都易于设置并且具有不错的UI，但是AWS和阿里巴巴有时看起来有点复杂，到处都是按钮，滑块和旋钮！ 这完全是由于他们有更多选择可供选择。 Digital Ocean使事情变得简单，这在设置事物时提供了更愉悦的用户体验。

All 3 services rely on you being comfortable giving commands via the console. They all have a wealth of documentation and tutorials that will walk you through various procedures.

所有这三种服务都取决于您是否能通过控制台轻松地发出命令。 他们都有大量的文档和教程，它们将带您完成各种过程。

The table below highlights some differences in what each service provides:

下表突出显示了每种服务提供的一些区别：

As you can see from the table, AWS is the only provider that has data centers in every continent. Alibaba has a big focus in Asia with data centers located in Dubai, Malaysia and Indonesia. They are also increasing their offering in the West with data centers in North America as well as Europe. Digital Ocean is primarily focused in Western countries.

从表中可以看出，AWS是唯一一个在每个大洲都拥有数据中心的提供商。 阿里巴巴将重点放在亚洲，数据中心位于迪拜，马来西亚和印度尼西亚。 他们还在北美和欧洲的数据中心增加了在西方的服务。 Digital Ocean主要集中在西方国家。

AWS and Alibaba Cloud offer Windows Server, whereas Digital Ocean only uses Linux Servers. It should be noted, however, that it does cost more to run a virtual Windows Server. All 3 services offer their own integrated storage solution and cloud-based databases are provided by AWS and Alibaba Cloud. It’s also possible to install any database software directly onto a virtual machine on all the services. They all provide an impressive list of extras that help to manage your virtual server and ensure it runs smoothly.

AWS和阿里云提供Windows Server，而Digital Ocean仅使用Linux服务器。 但是，应该注意的是，运行虚拟Windows Server的成本确实更高。 这三项服务均提供了自己的集成存储解决方案，AWS和阿里云则提供了基于云的数据库。 也可以将所有数据库软件直接安装到所有服务的虚拟机上。 它们都提供了令人印象深刻的附加功能列表，可帮助您管理虚拟服务器并确保其平稳运行。

Alibaba Cloud also boasts an impressively high-level of security service that has successfully defended their services from a huge number of attacks over the years using an elastic network of web application firewalls.

阿里云还拥有令人印象深刻的高级别安全服务，多年来使用弹性的Web应用程序防火墙网络成功地保护了其服务免受各种攻击。

价钱 (Pricing)

Comparing the pricing for these services is actually very difficult! The granular level of customisation that AWS and Alibaba Cloud offer means that its very difficult to compare exactly like with like. To complicate matters further, you can get cheaper deals with AWS if you don’t need the service available all the time.

比较这些服务的价格实际上是非常困难的！ AWS和阿里云提供的细粒度定制意味着很难非常精确地进行比较。 更复杂的是，如果您不需要始终可用的服务，则可以与AWS进行更便宜的交易。

Amazon pricing is all ‘on-demand’, so you only pay for exactly what you use. They also offer reserved and spot instances at a discount if you don’t your service to be constantly available.

亚马逊的定价都是“按需”定价，因此您只需为使用的商品付费。 如果您不希望持续提供服务，它们还会以折扣价提供预留实例和现货实例。

Digital Ocean uses the concept of Droplets that are paid for on a monthly subscription basis. Once again they have tried to simplify things to avoid using complicated calculators to try and predict what your monthly costs will be. The lowest priced droplet starts at $5 a month for a basic starter package. You can upgrade to a different droplet whenever you need to and can also pay for additional memory or storage as you need it.

Digital Ocean使用按月付费的Droplet概念。 他们再次尝试简化事情，以避免使用复杂的计算器来尝试预测您的每月费用。 价格最低的小滴基本入门包的起价为每月5美元。 您可以随时升级到其他Droplet，也可以根据需要购买额外的内存或存储。

Alibaba Cloud offers an on demand option that sits somewhere between AWS and Digital Ocean’s droplets. They offer per second billing on pay-as-you-go instances, but give discounts for sustained monthly and annual usage. They also offer package plans that make it easier to get started with the most common configurations already built for you and typically offer better value than the same set-up as a pay-as-you-go option.

阿里云提供了一个按需选项，位于AWS和Digital Ocean的Droplet之间。 他们提供按需付费实例的每秒账单，但为持续每月和每年使用量提供折扣。 他们还提供打包计划，使您可以更轻松地开始使用已为您构建的最常见配置，并且与通过即用即付选项进行的设置相比，通常可以提供更高的价值。

Despite the difficulty in comparing prices, here are some different setups and the prices to give you an idea of what you might expect to pay:

尽管比较价格有困难，但是这里有一些不同的设置和价格，可让您大致了解要支付的价格：

Note that AWS charges by the hour so has been calculated by multiplying this by 730.5 as an estimate for the number of hours in a month. You have to pay for storage as an extra using S3. Prices were taken from this page and are correct at publication date.

请注意，AWS按小时收费，是通过将其乘以730.5得出的，以估算一个月中的小时数。 您必须使用S3额外支付存储空间。 价格是从此页面获取的 ，在发布之日是正确的。

入门包 (Starter Package)

AWS – $10.08/month

AWS –每月$ 10.08

• 1 CPU1个CPU
• 1GB Memory1GB记忆体
• No Storage没有存储

Alibaba Cloud – $4.50/month

阿里云 –每月$ 4.50

• 1 CPU1个CPU
• 1GB Memory1GB记忆体
• 40GB SSD Storage40GB SSD储存空间

Digital Ocean – $5/month

Digital Ocean – $ 5 /月

• 1 CPU1个CPU
• 1GB Memory1GB记忆体
• 25GB SSD Storage25GB SSD储存空间

热门套餐 (Popular Packages)

AWS – $40.32

AWS – 40.32美元

• 1 CPU1个CPU
• 1GB Memory1GB记忆体
• No Storage没有存储

Alibaba Cloud – $39/month

阿里云 – 39美元/月

• 2 CPUs2个CPU
• 4GB Memory4GB记忆体
• 60GB SSD Storage60GB SSD储存空间

Digital Ocean – $20/month

Digital Ocean – $ 20 /月

• 2 CPUs2个CPU
• 4GB Memory4GB记忆体
• 80GB SSD Storage80GB SSD储存空间

高端包装 (High End Packages)

AWS – $683.75/month

AWS –每月683.75美元

• 16 CPUs16个CPU
• 64GB Memory64GB内存
• No Storage没有存储

Alibaba Cloud – $570/month

阿里云 – 570美元/月

• 32 CPUs32个CPU
• 128GB Memory128GB内存
• 3,000GB SSD Storage3,000GB SSD储存空间

Digital Ocean – $640/month

Digital Ocean – $ 640 /月

• 24 CPUs24个CPU
• 128GB Memory128GB内存
• 2,560GB SSD Storage2,560GB SSD储存空间

All 3 services offer additional storage options and the prices are pretty similar (between $0.01 and $0.03 per GB). Be aware that you need to take into account that there may be extra bandwidth costs associated with uploading and downloading any resources that you store using these services.

所有这三种服务都提供了额外的存储选项，价格也非常相似(每GB 0.01到0.03美元)。 请注意，您需要考虑到与上传和下载使用这些服务存储的任何资源有关的带宽成本。

The good news is that Alibaba Cloud are currently offering $300 of free credit to get you started, so you can try out a basic server as well as some of their other features without risking any money.

好消息是， 阿里云目前提供300美元的免费信用额 ，帮助您入门，因此您可以试用基本服务器以及其中的一些其他功能，而无需花任何钱。

帮助支持 (Help & Support)

So what happens when you get stuck? If you run into difficulties, then all 3 services offer a ticketing system and all get back to you reasonably quickly. Digital Ocean has a bit more of a friendly feel about it as the other two feel a bit more corporate. AWS and Alibaba also offer paid-for technical support if it is required.

那么，当您卡住时会发生什么？ 如果您遇到困难，则所有3个服务都提供票务系统，并且所有服务都会在很短的时间内回复您。 Digital Ocean对此有更多的友好感觉，而其他两个感觉则更具合作感。 如果需要，AWS和阿里巴巴还提供付费的技术支持。

All 3 services also all have a large wealth of online support databases, chock full of tutorials and how-to guides that will walk you through how to set up all the common configurations.

所有这三个服务还都具有大量的在线支持数据库，其中包含完整的教程和操作指南，它们将引导您逐步设置所有常见配置。

结论 (Conclusion)

We are living in a golden age of cloud computing and really are spoilt for choice. All three of the companies covered in this article offer lots of options and are great value for money.

我们生活在云计算的黄金时代，确实被宠坏了选择。 本文涵盖的所有三个公司都提供了很多选择，并且物有所值。

Amazon is still the market leader and you can be confident that they will provide you with a good service with lots of options.

亚马逊仍然是市场的领导者，您可以放心，他们将为您提供优质的服务以及多种选择。

Digital Ocean make the task of setting up a virtual machine seem much less daunting and they have built a brilliant community of developers.

Digital Ocean使设置虚拟机的任务看起来不那么艰巨，并且他们已经建立了一个精采的开发人员社区。

Alibaba have a good introductory offer and the cheapest quick set-up monthly fee of $4.50, so would be a good option if you’ve been thinking about giving cloud computing a go. The offer will let you run a basic server for up to 2-months and you’ll also be able to use your free credit to try out some of their other services as well.

阿里巴巴有一个很好的介绍性报价 ，最便宜的快速设置月费为4.50美元，因此如果您一直在考虑让云计算成为现实，那将是一个不错的选择。 该优惠将使您可以在一个基本服务器上运行长达2个月的时间，并且还可以使用免费的信用额来试用其其他一些服务。

翻译自: https://www.sitepoint.com/alibaba-cloud-aws-digitalocean-compared-web-services-in-the-cloud/