Alibaba Cloud uses leased lines provided by partners to establish a connection between Alibaba Cloud and another cloud service provider. This allows centralized management of data across multiple cloud service providers and implements cross-cloud connectivity.
Overview
The development of business in the cloud by global enterprises requires multiple enterprises to use Alibaba Cloud services in China and services of other cloud service providers such as Amazon Web Services (AWS) outside China. Scenarios exist where you must synchronize, access, and then migrate a large amount of data between Alibaba Cloud and AWS.
The multi-cloud connection feature provided by Alibaba Cloud helps you establish a leased line between Alibaba Cloud and another cloud service provider. This way, Alibaba Cloud can be connected to another cloud service provider. This meets the requirement for access of business between multiple cloud service providers, which enriches business connection capabilities and ensures cross-cloud connectivity.
Alibaba Cloud provides an end-to-end process to configure resources. You need only to place an order at the Alibaba Cloud official website to enable the multi-cloud connection capability. This way, access between multiple cloud service providers is implemented.
The use of leased lines eliminates the need to use the Internet for transmission. This ensures the transmission security for enterprise data.
Components
- Multi-cloud connection instance: the logical entity used to connect Alibaba Cloud to AWS.
- Virtual border router (VBR): the border router that connects Cloud Enterprise Network (CEN) developed by Alibaba Cloud to AWS. VBR serves as a bridge to transfer data from an Alibaba Cloud data center to AWS.
- Direct Connect: allows you to establish a network connection to connect Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) to Alibaba Cloud. Direct Connect serves as a bridge to transfer data from an AWS data center to Alibaba Cloud.
Supported cloud service providers
- AWS
- Azure
Supported regions
- Europe and Americas regions: US (Silicon Valley) and Germany (Frankfurt)
- Asia Pacific regions: Singapore and Australia (Sydney)
Scenarios
You can create a multi-cloud connection to connect single-region resources and multi-region resources.
- Connection between single-region resources: Resources must be synchronized or migrated
for backend cloud services such as database and storage services between AWS and Alibaba
Cloud. Resources in single regions must be accessible between Alibaba Cloud and AWS
over internal networks.
- Alibaba Cloud: CEN and VBR
- AWS: virtual gateway (VGW) and Direct Connect
- Connection between multi-region resources: A platform is used to implement management
around the globe. To centrally manage multi-region resources, you need only to deploy
a set of O&M tools such as jump servers and O&M tools for monitoring and publishing.
Multi-region resources must be accessible between Alibaba Cloud and AWS over internal
networks.
- Alibaba Cloud: CEN and VBR
- AWS: VGW and Direct Connect gateway
Benefits
- Interaction between multiple clouds
The multi-cloud connection solution provided by Alibaba Cloud enables other cloud service providers to transfer data to Alibaba Cloud. This way, resources are accessible between different cloud service providers and across different regions.
- Stability and high efficiency
The use of leased lines that connect Alibaba Cloud to another cloud service provider eliminates the need to use the Internet for transmission. This delivers latencies as short as and bandwidths as high as communications over internal networks.
- Security and reliability
Leased lines provide end-to-end connections. This ensures the security and reliability for data transmission over networks.