CloudBox uses several infrastructure-specific terms that differ from standard public cloud concepts. This page defines the five key terms you'll encounter before and after deployment.
Key concepts
Deployment site — The physical location where CloudBox hardware is installed. A site must meet requirements across three areas: power supply, network connectivity, and environmental conditions. For details, see Deployment requirements.
CloudBox zone — A physical area within a region that has independent power grids and networks, mapping one-to-one with a cloud box. A CloudBox zone works like a public cloud zone, with one key difference: it runs inside your on-premises data center and is dedicated exclusively to your organization.
CloudBox rack — The physical enclosure that houses all CloudBox computing resources, block storage resources, and Object Storage Service (OSS). Each rack is a standard 42U unit that Alibaba Cloud installs and deploys as a single public cloud zone at your site. Alibaba Cloud maintains the servers and network devices inside the rack.
Note: Do not move or operate any devices in the rack unless Alibaba Cloud has explicitly authorized you to do so.
SKU — The unit CloudBox uses to express compute capacity. Each stock keeping unit (SKU) defines a specific vCPU and memory configuration. A cloud box includes at least one compute SKU, and you can combine multiple SKUs of different types and quantities. For available configurations, see the "Compute SKU specifications" section of Computing resources.
CloudBox host — A hardware host deployed directly inside a cloud box, dedicated to a single tenant regardless of whether you run Elastic Compute Service (ECS) instances or dedicated hosts (DDH) on it. All resources on a CloudBox host are exclusive to a single tenant. This ensures strong resource isolation and security.
For more information about DDH, see What is DDH?