The hardware and software of Alibaba Cloud public cloud, such as computing, storage, and network resources, are integrated into your data center to meet specific requirements of fully managed cloud services. These requirements include data security, on-premises data processing, and low latency. You can use CloudBox out of the box. This allows you to focus on the business logic and reduce the O&M cost. This also ensures consistent experience with the Alibaba Cloud public cloud.
Benefits
Alibaba Cloud public cloud can provide users with a large number of cloud services and deliver an out-of-the-box and fully managed service experience. However, the service cannot meet several on-premises deployment requirements. Self-managed IT infrastructure and traditional private cloud can resolve the issues of data security and low latency, but they also cause other problems, such as high construction costs and complex O&M. To resolve these issues, Alibaba Cloud launched CloudBox to extend the infrastructure of Alibaba Cloud public cloud to on-premises deployment. This helps ensure data security and low latency and provides low-cost and O&M-free cloud services. The following section provides a comparison among CloudBox, Alibaba Cloud public cloud, and self-managed IT infrastructure.
Item | CloudBox | Alibaba Cloud public cloud | Self-managed IT infrastructure or traditional private cloud |
Industries | Manufacturing, medical industry, and non-bank finance | General industries and the Internet | Government and finance |
Scenarios | Low latency and edge computing for enterprises | Elastic and stable | Data localization |
Core features | Small-scale, easy to start, and fully managed | Highly elastic | Secure and manageable |
Consistent service capability | ✔️ | ✔️ | ❌ |
Standardized delivery | ✔️ | ✔️ | ❌ |
Agile scale-out | ✔️ | ✔️ | ❌ |
Fully managed O&M | ✔️ | ✔️ | ❌ |
Easy construction | ✔️ | ✔️ | ❌ |
Low latency | ✔️ | ❌ | ✔️ |
Data localization | ✔️ | ❌ | ✔️ |
Data processing in nearby data centers | ✔️ | ❌ | ✔️ |
Strong physical isolation | ❌ | ❌ | ✔️ |
Similar to Alibaba Cloud public cloud, CloudBox provides O&M-free and low-cost cloud services for on-premises deployment. For more information, see Benefits.
- Meet security compliance requirements
- Meet business system requirements
- Sensitive data or a large amount of data exists, which cannot be migrated to the cloud
On-premises deployment
- Managed by Alibaba Cloud public cloud in a centralized manner
- Provide O&M similar to Alibaba Cloud public cloud
- Alibaba Cloud installs and deploys infrastructure, and performs O&M on infrastructure
O&M Free
- Small-scale deployment requires low cost
- Standardized delivery requires a short period of time
- Purchase of cloud services instead of hardware devices requires low cost
Cost-effective
CloudBox is suitable for scenarios such as on-premises data processing, low latency, data security, and management of multiple branches based on the preceding benefits. For more information, see Scenarios.
On-premises data processing
Suitable for scenarios in which data cannot be transferred to Alibaba Cloud public cloud for processing because of bandwidth, cost, data volume, and time limit.
Sample scenarios: AI model training, rendering, and data analysis of traffic videos.
Low Latency
Suitable for scenarios in which on-premises devices need to interact with applications in near real-time.
Sample scenarios: industrial parks, industrial manufacturing, and warehouse management.
Data security
Suitable for scenarios in which data must be deployed in industrial parks, data centers, or regions to meet regulatory, compliance, and security requirements.
ample scenarios: industry associations, airlines, and hospitals.
Multi-branch collaboration
Suitable for scenarios in which centralized O&M is required to reduce costs because IT infrastructure is distributed in different regions or regions that are not convenient for O&M.
Sample scenarios: intelligent community and factory.
Architecture
CloudBox is an extension of Alibaba Cloud public cloud in data centers. After you purchase a cloud box, Alibaba Cloud deploys infrastructure such as computing resources, storage resources, and network resources to your data center. You can easily create cloud service instances in CloudBox. The following figure shows the architecture of CloudBox.
Features
CloudBox inherits the basic capabilities and a marketplace with abundant ecological applications from Alibaba Cloud public cloud. CloudBox provides the following features:
On-premises deployment and data audit capabilities
After CloudBox is deployed on the local data center and connected to Alibaba Cloud public cloud over the network of CloudBox (physical connections or the Internet), CloudBox can meet your business requirements for data security and low latency and provide exclusive resources. Alibaba Cloud supports data audit for CloudBox network connections and third-party security audit to provide secure on-premises cloud services.
Hyper-converged technology to reduce processing costs
CloudBox uses the SHENLONG architecture of Alibaba Cloud public cloud based on the computing, storage, and network hyper-convergence technologies and reuses the central management and control capabilities of Alibaba Cloud public cloud. CloudBox can be sold in a single rack to reduce costs.
Extension of Alibaba Cloud public cloud to provide consistent cloud service experience
CloudBox supports O&M and deployment tools, APIs, and full lifecycle management of instances that are provided by Alibaba Cloud public cloud. This provides the same cloud service experience as that provided by Alibaba Cloud public cloud. You can seamlessly migrate your business code that runs on on-premises devices to Alibaba Cloud public cloud with lower learning costs. You can also migrate business code that runs on Alibaba Cloud public cloud to CloudBox.
Purchase out-of-the-box and fully managed cloud services based on your business requirements
CloudBox provides infrastructure such as computing, storage, and network resources. Alibaba Cloud is responsible for the installation, deployment, and O&M of the infrastructure. You can purchase cloud services based on your business requirements and use Alibaba Cloud services to manage resources in CloudBox. For more information about the cloud services that are supported by CloudBox, see Services that work with CloudBox.
Billing
You are charged for computing resources, Elastic Block Storage (EBS), Object Storage Service (OSS), and network bandwidth. The subscription duration can be three years or five years. Only the subscription billing method is supported. After your purchase, you can use CloudBox within the subscription duration. For more information, see Billing overview.
When you purchase CloudBox, you purchase cloud service resources instead of hardware devices. The hardware devices of CloudBox belong to Alibaba Cloud.
Use CloudBox
The procedure for purchasing and using CloudBox involves the steps that are shown in the preceding figure. The following section describes the steps:
Purchase: You can select CloudBox resources in the Alibaba Cloud console and submit an order.
Delivery: Alibaba Cloud conducts a data center site survey to install and deploy CloudBox.
Use: You accept CloudBox and start using cloud services.
Unsubscription: If you no longer need to use CloudBox, terminate the service after it expires or apply for unsubscription in advance.