You can convert an existing NAT service plan to an EIP bandwidth plan. EIP bandwidth plans support bandwidth sharing and transferring on a regional scale. After you purchase an EIP bandwidth plan, you can add all elastic IP addresses (EIPs) in the same region to the EIP bandwidth plan. This saves bandwidth costs because these EIPs can share the bandwidth of the EIP bandwidth plan.

Considerations

When you convert a NAT service plan to an EIP bandwidth plan, no network disconnections will occur and therefore your workloads are not affected. After conversion:
  • The public IP addresses in the NAT service plan are converted to EIPs.
  • The NAT service plan is converted to an EIP bandwidth plan, which is easier to manage and more cost-effective.
  • If the conversion fails, you can continue to use the NAT service plan. If you fail to locate the cause of the conversion failure, submit a ticket. When you submit a ticket, you must provide the following information:
    • Your account ID (UID).
    • The request ID generated by Alibaba Cloud when you call the ConvertBandwidthPackage operation.
    • The ID of the NAT service plan that failed to be converted.
    • The screenshot of the conversion failure.

Preparations

Before you convert a NAT service plan, make sure that the following requirements are met:

  • Your account has the permissions to convert the NAT service plan.
    We recommend that you use your Alibaba Cloud account to convert the NAT service plan. If you want to convert the NAT service plan as a Resource Access Management (RAM) user, you must first log on to the RAM console with your Alibaba Cloud account and grant the RAM user the following permissions:
    • AliyunNATGatewayFullAccess
    • AliyunEIPFullAccess
    • AliyunCommonBandwidthPackageFullAccessAuthorize
  • Your account has sufficient unused EIPs.
    After the NAT service plan is converted, the public IP addresses in the NAT service plan are converted to EIPs. Make sure that the number of EIPs is greater than or equal to the number of public IP addresses in the NAT service plan. In the Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) console, you can view the number of EIPs on the Quota Management page. If the number of EIPs is insufficient, you can apply for more in the VPC console.Quota Management
  • Your account is in the whitelist if the NAT service plan is charged on a pay-by-data-transfer basis.

    If the NAT service plan to be converted is billed on a pay-by-data-transfer basis, submit a ticket to apply for the permissions to convert the NAT service plan.

  • The information about the NAT service plan is backed up.

    Before you convert your NAT service plan, fill the following table with the NAT service plan information, so that you can track the conversion progress and verify the result.

    The ID of the NAT service plan Region Maximum bandwidth The number of public IP addresses Conversion status The ID of the EIP bandwidth plan
    bwp-xxx1 China (Hangzhou) 200M 20 Successful cbwp-xxx1
    bwp-xxx2 China (Shanghai) 500M 50 Pending N/A

Procedure

After the prerequisites are met, perform the following operations to start the conversion:

  1. Call the ConvertBandwidthPackage operation to complete the conversion. For more information, see ConvertBandwidthPackage.
  2. Verify the conversion result.
    You can check the ID of the EIP bandwidth plan to verify whether the conversion is successful. IDs of NAT service plans are converted based on the following rule: ${cbwpId}='c'+${bwpId}. For example, if the ID of the NAT service plan is ${bwpId}=bwp-e8caejcj, the ID of the EIP bandwidth plan is cbwp-e8caejcj.
  3. After the NAT service plan is converted, navigate to the NAT Gateway tab on the Quota Management page and apply for the natgw_privilege_allow_bind_eip permission.
    The application is reviewed automatically. Wait one minute and click the Refresh icon. The latest status of the application is displayed.
    Note If you want to associate other EIPs with the NAT gateway after the natgw_privilege_allow_bind_eip permission is applied, log out and then log on to the NAT Gateway console again. Then, you can associate the EIPs with the NAT gateway. For more information, see Associate an EIP with a NAT gateway.
    Permissions to associate EIPs with NAT gateways