This topic describes the benefits of virtual private clouds (VPCs). VPCs are secure, reliable, flexible, easy to use, and scalable.

High reliability

Each VPC is identified by a unique tunnel ID, which corresponds to a virtual network. Different VPCs are isolated by tunnel IDs:
  • Similar to a traditional network, you can create vSwitches and vRouters to divide a VPC into multiple subnets. Elastic Compute Service (ECS) instances in the same subnet use the same vSwitch to communicate with each other, while ECS instances in different subnets use vRouters to communicate with each other.
  • VPCs are completely isolated from each other. Cloud resources in different VPCs can communicate with each other by using elastic IP addresses (EIPs) or NAT IP addresses.
  • The IP packets of an ECS instance are encapsulated by using the tunneling technology. Therefore, information at the data link layer (the MAC address) of the ECS instance is not transferred to the physical network. This way, ECS instances in different VPCs are isolated at Layer 2.
  • ECS instances in a VPC use security groups and firewalls to control inbound and outbound traffic at Layer 3.

Flexible management

You can use security group rules and access control lists (ACLs) to manage inbound and outbound traffic to cloud resources in a VPC in a flexible manner.

Ease of use

You can easily create and manage VPCs in the VPC console. When you create a VPC, the system automatically creates a vRouter and a route table for the VPC.

High scalability

You can create different subnets in a VPC to deploy different services. Additionally, you can connect a VPC to a data center or another VPC to extend the network architecture.