This topic describes how to use Cloud Enterprise Network (CEN) to mount a file system across virtual private clouds (VPCs) or regions.
Prerequisites
- A file system is created. For more information, see Manage file systems.
- A mount target is created. For more information, see Create a mount target.
Background information
By default, a file system can be mounted on an Elastic Compute Service (ECS) instance only if the instance and mount target reside in the same VPC. If the mount target and the ECS instance reside in different VPCs, you can use CEN to establish a connection between the VPCs. You can then enable a cross-VPC mount for the file system.
The following procedure uses an example to describe how to establish a connection between two VPCs that belong to the same Alibaba Cloud account. In this example, VPC 1 and VPC 2 are used and attached to the same CEN instance. The procedure applies regardless of whether VPC 1 and VPC 2 reside in the same region.

Step 1: Create a CEN instance
Step 2: Attach a VPC to the CEN instance
Step 3: Mount the file system
After the preceding configurations are complete, mount a file system in one of the VPCs on an ECS instance in the other VPC.
- For more information about how to mount an NFS file system on a Linux ECS instance, see Mount an NFS file system.
- For more information about how to mount an SMB file system on a Windows ECS instance, see Mount an SMB file system on Windows.