An account is created upon successful registration with the cloud platform. The account has full access permissions for all of its cloud services and resources. It can be used to reset user passwords and grant user permissions. The account is a payment entity and should not be used directly to perform routine management. For security purposes, create IAM users and grant them permissions for routine management.

An IAM user is created using an account to use cloud services. Each IAM user has its own identity credentials (password and access keys).

An IAM user can view the account ID and user ID on the My Credentials page of the console. The account name, username, and password will be required for API authentication.

A region is a physical location where a cloud service is deployed. Availability zones (AZ) in the same region can communicate with each other over an intranet but AZs in different regions cannot communicate with each other. By creating cloud resources in different regions, you can design applications to better meet customer requirements and comply with local laws and regulations.

An AZ contains one or more physical data centers. It has independent cooling, fire extinguishing, moisture-proof, and electricity facilities. Within an AZ, computing, network, storage, and other resources are logically divided into multiple clusters. AZs within a region are interconnected using high-speed optical fibers to allow users to build cross-AZ high-availability systems.

Projects group and isolate resources (including compute, storage, and network resources) across physical regions. A default project is provided for each region, and subprojects can be created under each default project. Users can be granted permissions to access all resources in a specific project. For more refined access control, create subprojects under a project and purchase resources in the subprojects. Users can then be assigned permissions to access only specific resources in the subprojects.

An IAM user can view the project ID on the My Credentials page.

Figure 1 Project isolation model

Enterprise projects group and manage resources across regions. Resources in enterprise projects are logically isolated from each other. An enterprise project can contain resources of multiple regions, and resources can be added to or removed from enterprise projects.

For details about how to obtain enterprise project IDs and features, see Enterprise Management Service User Guide.