A developer runs a web application on a physical machine in an IDC.

Use a third-party image creation tool to create an image from the physical server. Upload the image to the ECS console to turn it into a custom image. Then, use the custom image to create ECS instances.

Use SMC(Server Migration Center) to collect data from the origin physical server. Create an intermediate ECS instance on Alibaba Cloud and wait for the data transfer to complete. Then generate a new image directly from that intermediate ECS instance.

Use a third-party image creation tool to create an image from the physical server. The image is then uploaded to Alibaba Cloud Object Storage Service (OSS) for storage. In the ECS console, import that image from OSS, then, create an ECS instance from the custom image.