You can associate an Anycast Elastic IP Address (Anycast EIP) with an Application Load Balancer (ALB) instance and use Anycast EIPs to provide services over the Internet. This topic describes how to associate an Anycast EIP with an ALB instance.

Benefits of Anycast EIP

  • Ease of use

    Anycast EIPs allow Internet access, which is similar to EIPs. Therefore, after you associate an Anycast EIP with an ALB instance, the ALB instance can use the Anycast EIP to provide services over the Internet. No further configurations are required. This improves the efficiency of workload deployment.

  • High security

    Anycast EIPs use cloud-native security technologies to protect your Internet-facing services from attacks. This provides an additional layer of security hardening for your backend servers.

  • Stability and reliability

    Each Anycast EIP supports connections from multiple PoPs. When one of the access points is down, network traffic is routed to another access point. This ensures the reliability of your services.

  • Reduced network jitter

    Anycast EIP helps your customers to connect to the nearest Alibaba Cloud PoP. Requests are delivered over the high-quality BGP bandwidth and global network provided by Alibaba Cloud to access the backend server with which the Anycast EIP is associated. This reduces network jitter over Internet connections.

Limits

If you want to assign an Anycast EIP to an ALB instance when the ALB instance is switched from an internal-facing instance to an Internet-facing instance, take note of the following items:
  • By default, you cannot associate an Anycast EIP with an ALB instance. To use this feature, log on to the Quota Center console, go to the Whitelist Quotas page, enter the quota ID slb_user_visible_gray_label/anycast_eip, and then apply for the privilege to use the feature. For more information, see Manage ALB quotas.
  • The following table describes the regions where you can associate Anycast EIPs with ALB instances.
    AreaRegion
    ChinaChina (Hong Kong)
    Asia PacificSouth Korea (Seoul), Japan (Tokyo), Indonesia (Jakarta), Philippines (Manila), Singapore, Malaysia (Kuala Lumpur), India (Mumbai), and Thailand (Bangkok)
    Europe and AmericasUK (London), US (Virginia), US (Silicon Valley), and Germany (Frankfurt)
  • The first time that you activate an Anycast EIP, Cloud Data Transfer (CDT) manages the billing of Internet data transfer and internal data transfer for the Anycast EIP. Follow the instructions to activate CDT. For more information, see Purchase an Anycast EIP.
  • When you create an Internet-facing ALB instance, the instance is associated with an EIP by default. To associate an Anycast EIP, perform the following steps:
    1. Switch the ALB instance from Internet-facing to internal-facing.
    2. Switch the ALB instance from internal-facing to Internet-facing and associate an Anycast EIP with the ALB instance.
  • ALB instances that are associated with Anycast EIPs cannot be associated with EIP bandwidth plans. The default maximum bandwidth of an Anycast EIP is 1,000 Mbit/s.
  • You cannot associate Anycast EIPs with IPv6 addresses of dual-stack ALB instances. You can associate Anycast EIPs only with IPv4 addresses of dual-stack ALB instances.
    Note By default, the dual-stack feature of ALB is unavailable. To use this feature, log on to the Quota Center console. On the Whitelist Quotas page, enter the quota ID slb_user_visible_gray_label/support_ipv6 and apply for the privilege to use the feature. For more information, see Manage ALB quotas.

Impacts on billing

Alibaba Cloud begins charging for an Anycast EIP after you associate the Anycast EIP with an ALB instance.

ALB billing
Billable itemCalculation formulaReferences
Instance feeInstance fee = Instance unit price (USD/hour) × Duration of usage (hours)Instance fees
LCU feeLCU fee = max{Number of LCUs for new connections, Number of LCUs for concurrent connections, Number of LCUs for data transfer, Number of LCUs for rule evaluations} × LCU unit price × Duration of usage in hoursLCU fees
Internet data transfer fee
You are not charged Internet data transfer fees if you use internal-facing ALB instances. You are charged Internet data transfer fees only if you use Internet-facing ALB instances. Internet-facing ALB instances use EIPs to provide services over the Internet.
  • By default, a newly created ALB instance is associated with an EIP. You are charged an instance fee and a bandwidth fee or a data transfer fee for the EIP of the ALB instance. For more information, see Pay-as-you-go.
  • After an ALB instance is associated with an Anycast EIP, ALB charges a configuration fee, an Internet data transfer fee, and an internal data transfer fee for the Anycast EIP. For more information, see Billing.
Web Application Firewall (WAF) fee (optional)After WAF protection is enabled for an ALB instance, you are charged WAF protection fees. WAF 3.0 supports the subscription and pay-as-you-go billing methods. For more information, see Subscription and Pay-as-you-go. If you do not have a WAF instance in your Alibaba Cloud account, you can directly purchase a WAF-enabled ALB instance and activate a pay-as-you-go WAF 3.0 instance.

Prerequisites

You have created an ALB instance. For more information, see Create an ALB instance.

Associate an Anycast EIP with an ALB instance

Internal-facing ALB instance

If you have an internal-facing ALB instance, and you want to associate an Anycast EIP with the ALB instance, perform the following operations:

  1. Log on to the ALB console.
  2. In the top navigation bar, select the region where the ALB instance is deployed.
  3. On the Instances page, find the internal-facing ALB instance, and then click the instance ID.
  4. On the Instance Details tab, find the Basic Information section, and click Change Network Type next to the Network Type parameter.
  5. In the Change Network Type dialog box, set IP Address Type to Anycast EIP. Select Purchase Anycast EIP from the Assign Anycast EIP drop-down list, or specify an available Anycast EIP, and then click OK.
    Note
    • You must assign Anycast EIPs to all zones in the list.
    • When you select Purchase Anycast EIP, take note of the following items:
      • When you switch an ALB instance from Internet-facing to internal-facing or release the ALB instance, the associated Anycast EIP is automatically disassociated and released.
      • You can view the parameters of an Anycast EIP in the Anycast EIP console.
  6. The first time that you activate an Anycast EIP, a Note message appears. Confirm the information, select the Terms of Service, and then click Activate Now to activate CDT.
    The billing of Internet data transfer and internal data transfer of Anycast EIPs is managed by CDT. When you purchase an Anycast EIP, you must follow the instructions to activate CDT.

Internet-facing ALB instance

If you have an Internet-facing ALB instance that is associated with an EIP, and you want to associate an Anycast EIP with the ALB instance, perform the following operations on the ALB instance:
Note By default, a newly created Internet-facing ALB instance is associated with an EIP and uses the EIP to provide services over the Internet.
Associate an Anycast EIP with an Internet-facing ALB instance

Step 1: Change the Internet-facing ALB instance that is associated with an EIP to an internal-facing ALB instance

  1. On the Instances page, find the Internet-facing ALB instance, and then click the instance ID.
  2. On the Instance Details tab, find the Basic Information section, and click Change Network Type next to the Network Type parameter.
  3. In the Change Network Type message, confirm the impacts and click OK.
    It takes about 1 minute for the change to take effect. When the Network Type parameter on the Instance Details tab displays Private, the network type is changed.

Step 2: Change the ALB instance from internal-facing to Internet-facing and associate an Anycast EIP

  1. On the Instances page, find the internal-facing ALB instance, and then click the instance ID.
  2. On the Instance Details tab, find the Basic Information section, and click Change Network Type next to the Network Type parameter.
  3. In the Change Network Type dialog box, set IP Address Type to Anycast EIP. Select Purchase Anycast EIP from the Assign Anycast EIP drop-down list, or specify an available Anycast EIP, and then click OK.
    Note
    • You must assign Anycast EIPs to all zones in the list.
    • When you select Purchase Anycast EIP, take note of the following items:
      • When you switch an ALB instance from Internet-facing to internal-facing or release the ALB instance, the associated Anycast EIP is automatically disassociated and released.
      • You can view the parameters of an Anycast EIP in the Anycast EIP console.
  4. The first time that you activate an Anycast EIP, a Note message appears. Confirm the information, select the Terms of Service, and then click Activate Now to activate CDT.
    The billing of Internet data transfer and internal data transfer of Anycast EIPs is managed by CDT. When you purchase an Anycast EIP, you must follow the instructions to activate CDT.

References