Overview

What Is Direct Connect?

Direct Connect is a cloud service that allows you to establish a dedicated network connection between your premises and Flexible Engine. By using Direct Connect, you can establish private connectivity between Flexible Engine and your data center, office or collocation environment.

You can establish a connection between your router and Flexible Engine. If redundancy is required, we recommend that you establish two connections terminating at different locations. A connection consists of a single dedicated connection between ports on your router and Flexible Engine router.

Application Scenarios

You need a dedicated network connection between your data center and a Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) to ensure high bandwidth, low latency, and robust security.

Components

There are three key components for you to use Direct Connect: connection, virtual gateway, and virtual interface.

• Connection

  A connection is a dedicated network connection between your on-premises data center and a Direct Connect location over a leased line provided by a carrier. You can request standard connections or hosted connections. If you are a partner, you can also request operations connections.

  A standard connection provides a port that is exclusive to you and allows you to have multiple virtual interfaces associated.

  A hosted connection allows multiple users to share one port. Partners provision hosted connections and specify VLANs for those connections. Each user can associate only one virtual interface with a hosted connection. If a partner has created an operations connection, you can request a hosted connection from the partner, who will allocate the VLAN and bandwidth to your hosted connection.

• Virtual gateway

  A virtual gateway is a logical gateway for accessing a VPC. A virtual gateway can be associated with only one VPC. Multiple connections can access the same VPC through a single virtual gateway.

• Virtual interface

  A virtual interface is an entrance for you to access VPCs through a leased line. A virtual interface associates your connection with a virtual gateway, which connects to a VPC so that your network can access the cloud.