Some partners have pre-established connections to Alibaba Cloud Express Connect access points. If your IDC is outside an Express Connect region or does not need a high-bandwidth connection, you can work with a partner to connect your IDC to a VPC.
Background
The connection between a partner and Alibaba Cloud is shared among multiple tenants.
NoteA partner is a Network Service Provider (NSP), such as China Unicom or China Telecom, that has established a shared physical connection to an Alibaba Cloud access point.
Users with a reseller account cannot apply to become an NSP.
A tenant is the end user who uses a partner's physical connection to connect their on-premises IDC to Alibaba Cloud.
With a shared connection, the physical link from the partner access point to the Alibaba Cloud access point already exists. The partner only sets up the last-mile connection to your IDC, which shortens deployment time.
Compared to a dedicated connection, deployment for a shared connection typically takes less than one month.
Alibaba Cloud provides a shared port feature. Instead of pushing a cross-account Virtual Border Router (VBR) to the tenant, the partner pushes a cross-account shared port that the tenant owns.
In the shared port model, the billing items for a shared connection are adjusted as follows:
Partners are no longer charged the port installation fee, VBR instance fee, or port resource usage fee.
Tenants are charged a port resource usage fee and an outbound data transfer fee.
Shared connection billing is described in the Billing overview.
Each shared port supports only one VBR instance, creating a one-to-one mapping between the shared port and the VBR.
Partners use VLAN IDs for resource isolation. The partner assigns a VLAN ID when creating the shared connection. The tenant must use the same VLAN ID when creating their VBR and cannot change it.
To connect through a partner, you must contract with a third-party NSP. The partner is responsible for the SLA and any issues outside the Alibaba Cloud network.
Shared connection process
To set up a shared connection:
For a new shared connection, contact a partner and follow these steps:
For an existing shared connection, your partner converts it to the cross-account shared port model:
NoteResource conversion does not interrupt your services.
Create a shared Express Connect connection
In this example, your IDC is in the Equinix DC11 data center in US (Virginia) and your provider is Equinix. You use an ECX cross-connect to reach Alibaba Cloud in US (Virginia), then use cross-border interconnection to access ECS, OSS, RDS, and SLB resources in a VPC in China (Beijing).
Partners offer cross-connects with different bandwidth options. Contact your partner for details.
Contact Equinix for a cloud connection plan using a shared physical connection. Equinix performs a site survey, confirms resources and fees for the connection from the ECX platform to your IDC, and provides a quote.
Equinix provisions connectivity to your IDC and connects it to the ECX platform.
Provide your Alibaba Cloud account ID to Equinix.
You can click your user avatar in the upper-right corner of Alibaba Cloud console and then view your account ID in the pop-up.
Equinix creates a shared port for you.
Log on to the Express Connect console receives the shared port. For more information, see Tenant operations.