Some partners have pre-established connections with Alibaba Cloud Express Connect access points. If your on-premises data center (IDC) is not in a region where Alibaba Cloud Express Connect is available, or if your data does not require a high-bandwidth connection, an Alibaba Cloud partner can help you use an Express Connect circuit to connect your on-premises IDC to a virtual private cloud (VPC).
Background information
The connection between a partner and Alibaba Cloud is shared by multiple tenants.
NoteA partner is a Network Service Provider (NSP), such as China Unicom or China Telecom, that has a pre-established shared Express Connect circuit with an Alibaba Cloud access point.
A tenant is the end user of the Express Connect circuit resources. The tenant uses the partner's Express Connect circuit to establish network connectivity between their IDC and Alibaba Cloud.
A hosted connection over an Express Connect circuit uses a pre-provisioned circuit from the partner's access point to the Alibaba Cloud access point. The partner only needs to provision the last-mile connection from their access point to your on-premises IDC. This reduces the time required for cloud connectivity and is suitable for services with tight deadlines.
Compared with a dedicated Express Connect circuit, a hosted connection has a shorter construction period, typically less than one month.
Alibaba Cloud provides the shared port feature for partners. Instead of pushing a cross-account virtual border router (VBR) to a tenant, a partner can push a cross-account shared port to the tenant. The shared port belongs to the tenant.
In shared port mode, the billable items for a hosted connection over an Express Connect circuit are adjusted as follows:
The initial installation fee for the port, the VBR instance fee, and the port usage fee are no longer charged to the partner.
The port usage fee and outbound data transfer fee are charged to the tenant.
For more information about the billing of hosted connections over Express Connect circuits, see Billing overview.
After a partner helps a tenant create a shared port, the tenant can create only one VBR instance for the shared port. The ratio of shared ports to VBR instances is 1:1.
Partners must use VLAN IDs for resource isolation. When a partner creates a shared Express Connect circuit, a VLAN ID is specified. After the tenant accepts the shared port, the tenant inherits the VLAN ID created by the partner when creating a VBR instance. The VLAN ID cannot be modified.
To connect to Alibaba Cloud through a partner, you must sign a contract with a third-party network service provider to obtain the service. The partner is responsible for the Service-Level Agreement (SLA) and any issues outside the Alibaba Cloud network.
Connection process for hosted connections over Express Connect circuits
The process of connecting to the cloud using a hosted connection over an Express Connect circuit is as follows:
If you are creating a hosted connection over an Express Connect circuit for the first time, you can refer to the following flowchart and contact a partner to help you set up the connection.
If you have already connected to the cloud through a hosted connection over an Express Connect circuit, the partner needs to convert your resources to the cross-account shared port mode. The partner can refer to the following flowchart to perform the resource conversion.
NoteThis resource conversion does not affect your services.
Example of creating a hosted connection over an Express Connect circuit
This section provides another example. In this example, your IDC is in the Equinix DC11 data center in Virginia, US. The provider is Equinix. You want to use an Equinix Cloud Exchange (ECX) Fabric cross connection to connect to the Alibaba Cloud US (Virginia) region. You also want to use an Alibaba Cloud cross-border product to connect to your cloud resources in a VPC in the China (Beijing) region. These resources include ECS instances, OSS buckets, ApsaraDB RDS instances, and SLB instances.
Different partners provide cross connections with different bandwidth specifications. For more information, consult the respective partners.
Contact Equinix to inquire about a cloud connection solution that uses a hosted connection over an Express Connect circuit. Equinix performs a site survey for the Express Connect circuit, confirms the resources and fees for the connection from the ECX Fabric platform to your on-premises data center, and provides you with a quote.
Equinix completes the circuit construction in your on-premises IDC to connect to the ECX Fabric platform.
Provide your Alibaba Cloud account ID to Equinix.
You can view your Account ID in the Alibaba Cloud Management Console. To do this, click your profile picture in the upper-right corner, and then click Basic Information in the navigation pane on the left.
Equinix creates a shared port for you.
Log on to the Express Connect console to accept the shared port. For more information, see Tenant guide.