What is CloudBox? - Cloud Box - Alibaba Cloud Documentation Center

The hardware and software of Alibaba Cloud public cloud, such as cloud computing, storage, and network, are integrated into your data center to meet specific requirements of fully managed cloud services. These requirements include data security, on-premises data processing, and low latency. You can use CloudBox out of the box. This allows you to focus on the business logic and reduce the O&M cost. This also ensures consistent experience with the Alibaba Cloud public cloud.

Benefits

Alibaba Cloud public cloud can provide users with a large number of cloud services and deliver out-of-the-box and fully managed service experience. However, the service cannot meet several on-premises deployment requirements. Self-managed IT infrastructure and traditional private cloud can resolve the issues of data security and low latency, but they also cause other problems, such as high construction costs and complex O&M. To resolve these issues, Alibaba Cloud launched CloudBox to extend the infrastructure of Alibaba Cloud public cloud to on-premises deployment. This helps ensure data security and low latency and provides low-cost and O&M-free cloud services. The following section provides a comparison among CloudBox, Alibaba Cloud public cloud, and self-managed IT infrastructure.


Item	CloudBox	Alibaba Cloud public cloud	Self-managed IT infrastructure or traditional private cloud
Application industries	Manufacturing, medical industry, and non-bank finance	General and Internet	Government and finance
Application scenarios	Low latency and enterprise edge computing	Elastic and stable	On-premises data
Core features	Small-scale, low cost for construction, and fully managed	Highly elastic	Secure and manageable
Consistent cloud capability	✔️	✔️	❌
Standardized delivery	✔️	✔️	❌
Elastic scale-out	✔️	✔️	❌
Fully managed O&M	✔️	✔️	❌
Easy construction	✔️	✔️	❌
Low latency	✔️	❌	✔️
Localized data	✔️	❌	✔️
Data processed in the on-premises data center	✔️	❌	✔️
Strong physical isolation	❌	❌	✔️

Similar to Alibaba Cloud public cloud, CloudBox provides O&M-free and low-cost cloud services for on-premises deployment. For more information, see Benefits.

Meet security compliance requirements
Meet business system requirements
Sensitive data or a large amount of data exists, which cannot be migrated to the cloud

On-premises deployment

Managed by Alibaba Cloud public cloud in a centralized manner
Provide O&M similar to Alibaba Cloud public cloud
Alibaba Cloud installs and deploys infrastructure, and performs O&M on infrastructure

O&M Free

Small-scale deployment requires low cost
Standardized delivery requires a short period of time
Purchase of cloud services instead of hardware devices requires low cost

Cost-effective

The preceding benefits make CloudBox suitable for scenarios such as on-premises data processing, data security, and multiple branches that have low latency. For more information, see Scenarios.

On-premises data processing

Suitable for scenarios in which data cannot be transferred to Alibaba Cloud public cloud for processing because of bandwidth, cost, data volume, and time limit.

Sample scenarios: AI model training, rendering, and data analysis of traffic videos.

Low Latency

Suitable for scenarios in which on-premises devices need to interact with applications in near real-time.

Sample scenarios: industrial parks, industrial manufacturing, and warehouse management.

Data security

Suitable for scenarios in which data must be deployed in industrial parks, data centers, or regions to meet regulatory, compliance, and security requirements.

ample scenarios: industry associations, airlines, and hospitals.

Multi-branch collaboration

Suitable for scenarios in which centralized O&M is required to reduce costs because IT infrastructure is distributed in different regions or regions that are not convenient for O&M.

Sample scenarios: intelligent community and factory.

Service architecture

CloudBox is an extension of Alibaba Cloud public cloud in an on-premises data center. After you purchase CloudBox, Alibaba Cloud deploys basic infrastructure such as computing, storage, and network to a specified on-premises data center. You can easily create cloud service instances in CloudBox. The following figure shows the architecture of CloudBox. Service architecture

Features

CloudBox inherits the basic capabilities and rich ecological application market from Alibaba Cloud public cloud. The following features are supported:

On-premises deployment and data audit capabilities
After CloudBox is deployed on the on-premises data center and connected to Alibaba Cloud public cloud over the network of CloudBox (physical connections or the Internet), CloudBox can meet your business requirements for data security and low latency and provide exclusive resources. Alibaba Cloud supports data audit for CloudBox network connections and third-party security audit to provide secure on-premises cloud services.
Hyper-converged technology to reduce processing costs
CloudBox uses the SHENLONG architecture of Alibaba Cloud public cloud based on the computing, storage, and network hyper-convergence technologies and reuses the central management and control capabilities of Alibaba Cloud public cloud. CloudBox can be sold in a single rack to reduce costs.
Extension of Alibaba Cloud public cloud to provide consistent cloud service experience
CloudBox supports O&M and deployment tools, APIs, and full lifecycle management of instances that are provided by Alibaba Cloud public cloud. This provides cloud service experience that is the same as the experience provided by Alibaba Cloud public cloud. You can seamlessly migrate your business code that runs on on-premises devices to Alibaba Cloud public cloud with lower learning costs. You can also migrate business code that runs on Alibaba Cloud public cloud to CloudBox.
Buy out-of-the-box and fully managed cloud services on-demand
CloudBox provides infrastructure such as computing, storage, and network. Alibaba Cloud is responsible for the installation, deployment, and O&M of the infrastructure. You can purchase cloud services on demand. The following section describes the cloud services that are supported by CloudBox:
- Cloud services, such as computing resources and Elastic Block Storage (EBS), are deployed with CloudBox hardware.
- Cloud services of Alibaba Cloud public cloud, such as Security Center and Application Real-Time Monitoring Service (ARMS), can be reused.
For more information, see Supported Alibaba Cloud services.

Billing rules

You are charged for computing resources, EBS, Object Storage Service (OSS), and network bandwidth. The subscription period can be three years or five years. Only the subscription billing method is supported. After your purchase, you can use CloudBox within the subscription period. For more information, see Overview.

Note When you purchase CloudBox, you purchase cloud service resources instead of hardware devices. The hardware devices of CloudBox belong to Alibaba Cloud.

Use CloudBox

The procedure for purchasing and using CloudBox involves the steps that are shown in the preceding figure. The following section describes the steps:

Purchase: You can select CloudBox resources in the Alibaba Cloud console and submit an order.
Delivery: Alibaba Cloud conducts a data center site survey to install and deploy CloudBox.
Use: You accept CloudBox and start using cloud services.
Unsubscription: If you no longer need to use CloudBox, terminate the service after it expires or apply for unsubscription in advance.