After you connect your data center to an Alibaba Cloud access point through an Express Connect circuit, you must attach the associated virtual border router (VBR) to a Cloud Enterprise Network (CEN) instance. The CEN instance must be connected to the virtual private cloud (VPC) that you want to access. This setup allows your data center to communicate with the VPC through private connections.

Background information

CEN helps you build networks across the globe for use with hybrid cloud environments or distributed systems. CEN supports automatic route distribution and learning, which accelerates network convergence and improves the quality and security of cross-region communications.

Network instances such as VPCs, VBRs, and Cloud Connect Network (CCN) instances that are created in the same region and attached to the same CEN instance can communicate with each other through private connections free of charge. Data transfer between network instances in different regions is charged. For example, if you want a VBR in the China (Hangzhou) region and a VPC in the US (Silicon Valley) to communicate with each other, you must purchase a bandwidth plan and allocate bandwidth for cross-region communication.

Connect to a VPC

Prerequisites

Attach a VBR to a CEN instance

  1. Log on to the Express Connect console.
  2. In the top navigation bar, select a region and then click Virtual Border Routers (VBRs) in the left-side navigation pane.
  3. On the Virtual Border Routers (VBRs) page, find the VBR that you want to manage and click its ID.
  4. In the upper-right corner of the details page of the VBR, click Join CEN.
    Note Before you attach a VBR to a CEN instance, make sure that the VBR is in the Active state. You can view the status of the VBR in the Basic Information section.
  5. In the Join CEN panel, select the CEN instance to which you want to attach the VBR and click OK.

Detach a VBR from a CEN instance

  1. Log on to the Express Connect console.
  2. In the top navigation bar, select a region and then click Virtual Border Routers (VBRs) in the left-side navigation pane.
  3. On the Virtual Border Routers (VBRs) page, find the VBR that you want to manage and click its ID.
  4. In the Basic Information section, click Unbind on the right side of Associated CEN.
    • If the VBR is associated with an Enterprise Edition transit router:
      1. On the Intra-region Connections tab, find the VBR that you want to detach and click Detach in the Actions column.
      2. In the dialog box that appears, confirm the connection resources of the transit router. In the lower part of the dialog box, select Make sure that your services will not be affected if you delete the preceding x configurations at a time. Then, click OK.
      3. In the Are you sure that you want to delete the instance? message, confirm the instance information and click OK.
    • If the VBR is associated with a Basic Edition transit router:
      1. On the Intra-region Connections tab, find the VBR that you want to detach and click Detach in the Actions column.
      2. In the Detach Network message, click OK.

References

Express Connect
CEN