This topic introduces the resilience of Alibaba Cloud Resource Access Management (RAM).
RAM is a global service that can be used in all Alibaba Cloud regions. RAM is designed with a separate control plane and data plane to ensure maximum service availability and reliability during unexpected circumstances (such as service interruption). There is one RAM control plane for all Alibaba Cloud regions, which is located in Shanghai, China, and one data plane for each Alibaba Cloud region. Resource data for RAM access control, such as RAM identities (users, groups and roles), credentials (AccessKey ID and AccessKey secret, STS token) and policies, are sent into and securely stored in the control plane via change requests (both creation and update), the control plane data is then replicated and synchronized to each data plane. The RAM data plane of each region performs authentication and authorization for requests from the same region. This separated design of control plane and data plane delivers high service availability and optimum performance of access.
