Alibaba Cloud (also known as Aliyun) offers multiple templates that you can use to provision a Kubernetes environment. There are four main service categories:

• Kubernetes: Self-managed Kubernetes deployed with three masters on ECS instances within a single zone. Worker nodes can be on either ECS or bare-metal.
• Managed Kubernetes: Similar to the Kubernetes cluster option, except master nodes are managed by Alibaba Cloud.
• Multi-AZ Kubernetes: Similar to the Kubernetes cluster option, except the self-managed master and worker instances can be deployed in separate availability zones.
• Serverless Kubernetes: A Kubernetes service offering where you deploy container applications without having to manage and maintain clusters instances:

In this section, we will cover how to provision a highly available Multi-AZ Kubernetes cluster without needing to provision or manage master and etcd instances.