Basic Concepts

An account is generated after you register with HUAWEI CLOUD. An account has full access permissions for all the resources and cloud services under the account. It can reset user passwords and grant users permissions. The account is a payment entity, which should not be used directly to perform routine management. To ensure account security, create IAM users and grant them permissions for routine management.

IAM users are created by an account to use cloud services. Each IAM user has their own password and access key to access HUAWEI CLOUD using the console or APIs.

An IAM user can view the account ID and user ID on the My Credentials page of the management console. API authentication requires information such as the account name, username, and password.

A region is a physical location where cloud resources are deployed. Availability zones (AZs) in the same region can communicate with each other over an intranet but AZs in different regions cannot communicate with each other. Deploying cloud resources in different regions can better suit certain user requirements or comply with local laws or regulations.

An availability zone (AZ) comprises of one or more physical data centers equipped with independent ventilation, fire, water, and electricity facilities. Computing, network, storage, and other resources in an AZ 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.

A project corresponds to a HUAWEI CLOUD region. Default projects are defined to group and physically isolate resources (including computing, storage, and network resources) across regions. Users can be granted permissions in a default project to access all resources in the region associated with the project. If you need more refined access control, create sub-projects under a default project and purchase resources in sub-projects. Then you can assign users the permissions required to access only the resources in the specific sub-projects.

Figure 1 Project isolation model