Alibaba Cloud

Creating an account

1) Go to Alibaba Cloud website

2) Click on "Free Trial" in the top right corner

3) Select "Individual Account"

4) Enter your Email address and set your password

5) Select your country/region and enter your phone number. Then, request for a verification code and enter the verification code sent to your phone number

6) Select "Individual Account" again, fill in your billing information, verify your email address, and then submit the form

7) Add your credit card details. Note: You will not be billed if you only select products within the Free Tier

8) Once you have successfully created an account, click on "Free Trial"

Spin up your free VM

1) Under the Free Trial page, scroll down and look for the ECS u1 Instance. You will be able to run one of this instance for free for 3 months.

However, as the size is too small even for a testnet validator node, you can only practice the configuration steps without actually running the services using this.