Help Center/MaaS/API Reference/Before You Start
Updated on 2026-02-26 GMT+08:00
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Before You Start

Before calling MaaS APIs, ensure that you are familiar with MaaS concepts.

MaaS supports Representational State Transfer (REST) APIs, allowing you to call APIs using HTTPS. For details about API calling, see Calling APIs.

Endpoints

An endpoint is the request address for calling an API. Endpoints vary depending on services and regions. For the endpoints of all services, see Regions and Endpoints.

Constraints

For more constraints, see API description.

Terms and Definitions

  • Account

    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.

  • IAM user

    An IAM user is created by an account in IAM 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 IAM user ID on the My Credentials page of the console. The account, username, and password will be required for API authentication.

  • Region

    A region is a geographic area in which cloud resources are deployed. Availability zones (AZs) in the same region can communicate with each other over an intranet, while AZs in different regions are isolated from each other. Deploying cloud resources across multiple regions helps meet specific user needs and ensures compliance with local regulations.

  • AZ

    An AZ contains one or more physical data centers. Each AZ has independent cooling, fire extinguishing, moisture-proof, and electricity facilities. An AZ's compute, network, storage, and other resources are logically divided into multiple clusters. AZs within a region are interconnected by optical fibers for high-availability networking.

  • Project

    Projects group and isolate resources (including compute, storage, and network resources) across physical regions. A default project is provided for each the cloud region, and subprojects can be created under each default project. Users can be granted permissions to access all resources in a specific project. If you need more refined access control, create subprojects under a default project and create resources in subprojects. Then you can assign users the permissions required to access only the resources in the specific subprojects.

    To view a project ID, go to the My Credentials page.

    Figure 1 Project isolation model