IONOS Cross Connect feature helps you to establish a dedicated connection between Virtual Data Centers (VDCs) located in a specific region (location) using a private LAN. A region (location) refers to a selectable VDC location via the Cloud API or the Data Center Designer (DCD). These regions are represented in the form of codes, such as, de/fra, de/txl, es/vit etc.

Product Overview

Get an overview of Cross Connect.

Developer Tools

Get started with Cross Connect using Developer Tools.

Recommended How-Tos

Get started with Cross Connect via the DCD.

Recommended API How-To's

Get started with Cross Connect via the API.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

To get answers to the most commonly encountered questions about Cross Connect, see FAQs.

The effective interconnection and management of numerous have become crucial for businesses looking to streamline their operations in the dynamic world of cloud computing. The cutting-edge idea of Cross Connect, a powerful feature tapped into the IONOS Cloud environment, helps you to fulfill this requirement.

Cross Connect redefines the paradigm of VDC communication by enabling you to create seamless and secure LAN-based connections across VDCs located in the same IONOS Cloud contract and region. It only uses private LANs to ensure both strong security and high-performance connectivity, supporting a range of different workloads.

This robust functionality is custom made for clients aiming to establish secure connections between multiple using a single LAN conduit within the IONOS Cloud ecosystem.

Cross Connect provides a safe bridge between two separate data centers located in different physical locations, but within the same region. A private LAN connection is used to secure the connection. By limiting the number of Cross Connects a LAN may belong to, addressing inconsistencies are minimized. This configuration proves highly advantageous for classifying services, reducing potential threats, and preserving data.

Cross Connect employs a network of VDCs. Each VDC can contain several other resources, such as, private LANs, firewalls, switches, or virtual routers. These resources enable connections using established protocols to ensure a secure and reliable connection within the region where the Cross Connect is configured. The configuration of a Cross Connect and its association with VDCs within IONOS's cloud ecosystem establishes a virtual link for securely transmitting data and services across this bridge, thus ensuring speed and security. Businesses can ensure faster and more reliable digital transitions and resource sharing. The availability of IONOS's servers in the metro region enables closer proximity to businesses within the region, resulting in lower latency.

Cross Connect Components

The following components are an integral part of Cross Connect:

• Intraconnection of VDCs via private LANs: Allows peering VDCs, which are within the same region and belong to the same contract, via a private LAN connection. This dedicated connection creates a safe channel and safeguards sensitive data.

• Connectable VDCs: Allows connecting VDCs within the same region and if they belong to the same contract. In this manner, you can also share resources and functionalities without having to install them in each data center.

• Secured connection: Enables authorized users only to create, access, manage, edit, and share the connection. In addition, the feature operates only on a private LAN, thus, securing data transfer.

Features

• Virtual Data Center Interconnectivity: Cross Connect enables the creation of dedicated LAN-based links between VDCs, thus connecting disparate data centers. This interconnectivity lays the foundation for collaborative workflows, data sharing, and streamlined application deployment.

• Contract and Regional Compatibility: To leverage the Cross Connect feature, the participating VDCs must be associated with the same IONOS Cloud contract and exist within the same geographic region. This constraint ensures data sovereignty, compliance, and optimal performance within a consistent operational context.

• Private LAN Utilization: The Cross Connect functionality relies exclusively on private LANs, ensuring the security and isolation of the interconnected VDCs. This privacy-centric approach safeguards sensitive data while promoting a controlled and segregated networking environment.

• Unique LAN Association: Each LAN can be designated as a constituent of a single Cross Connect connection. This exclusivity prevents network conflicts and guarantees a clear and dedicated channel for communication between the interconnected VDCs.

• IP Range Uniformity: A fundamental prerequisite for establishing a Cross Connect connection is the adherence to a common IP range. The IP addresses used by the VDCs within the Cross Connect must belong to the same IP range, thus minimizing addressing discrepancies and facilitating seamless communication.

Benefits

• Enhanced Data Transfer: Cross Connect revolutionizes data transfer between VDCs by eliminating the need for data to traverse public networks. This results in significantly reduced latency, faster transfer speeds, and a responsive network experience.

• Optimized Resource Utilization: By seamlessly linking VDCs, Cross Connect optimizes resource utilization. Workloads can be dynamically distributed across interconnected VDCs, enhancing overall system efficiency and performance.

• Simplified Collaboration: The ability to connect VDCs via LANs breaks down collaboration barriers. Teams can work collaboratively across interconnected VDCs, sharing data and applications without the hindrance of physical separation.

• Data Security and Compliance: Private LAN usage ensures that sensitive data remains within a controlled environment. Cross Connect helps meet data security standards and regulatory compliance requirements by keeping data transfers confined to the secure IONOS Cloud infrastructure.

• Scalability and Flexibility: Cross Connect accommodates evolving business needs by offering a scalable approach to network expansion. As organizations grow, new VDCs can be seamlessly integrated into the ecosystem, ensuring that the network infrastructure aligns with changing demands.

• Disaster recovery strategies: One of the notable advantages of Cross Connect is its vital role in disaster recovery and data backup. By linking disparate VDCs in the region, organizations can easily meet their business continuity and disaster recovery strategies.

• Enhanced VDC Communication and Collaboration: Cross Connect's fundamental purpose is to elevate the communication and collaboration capabilities of VDCs. By establishing LAN connections with substantial bandwidth, Cross Connect effectively reduces latency and accelerates data transfers between interconnected VDCs. This dynamic connectivity is vital for organizations seeking to optimize their workflows and operational efficiency.

• Security and Isolation: The utilization of private LANs in the Cross Connect framework inherently contributes to a heightened level of security and isolation. The isolated LAN connections between VDCs offer a fortified environment for data exchanges, shielding sensitive information from potential security threats that might exist in a shared network context.

• Resource Utilization and Workload Optimization: Through the seamless integration of VDCs facilitated by Cross Connect, resource utilization becomes more optimized and adaptable. This interconnectedness allows for efficient load balancing and resource allocation across VDCs, enabling businesses to achieve greater performance and cost-effectiveness.

You can configure a Cross Connect via the DCD and associate it with multiple VDCs to establish a connection between them via a private LAN.

Prerequisites

• Contract owners and administrators can create, access, manage, and use Cross Connect without additional permissions. However, non-admin users need relevant access to create and manage Cross Connect. For more information, see Set Up User Privileges for Cross Connect.

• Before you connect data centers, ensure they:

  • belong to the same region and contract. Prior to connecting, remember to provision your data centers.

  • have the same IP address range.

• Ensure that the IP address is tied to only one instance.

• The LANs to be used for the connection should be private LANs. The private NICs to be connected should have unique IP addresses that belong to the same IP range.

Quick Links

The following links redirect you to the relevant pages.

A Cross Connect is necessary if you are seeking to establish a connection between your VDCs that belong to the same region.

To create a Cross Connect, follow these steps:

1. Log in to DCD with your username and password.

2. Follow either of these options to create a Cross Connect:

• From the DCD menu, click Network to open the drop-down menu and select Cross Connect. Select + Create in the Manage Cross Connects window.

• Alternatively, you can also drag-and-drop the Cross Connect element to the Workspace. Click + to create a Cross Connect.

3. Enter the following details:

• Name: Enter a name for the Cross Connect.

• Description: Enter additional information about the Cross Connect. This is optional.

4. Click Create Cross Connect to create.

Cross Connect is a natural fit for sharing secure information between VDCs that belong to IONOS's Cloud ecosystem in a specific region. It acts as a backup and recovery tool, and ensures continued business connectivity and reduced latency, and a secure data transmission.

Scenario 1: Resource Sharing

Precondition

The price and overhead of managing resources individually rises with the installation and administration of each data center.

Solution

Within the regional hub, you can provide access to centralized resources or functionality while concealing crucial information. For example, consider creating two VDCs— VDC1 for the sales team and VDC2 for the operations team. Add centralized functionalities, such as a firewall and a Virtual Private Network (VPN), network security, identity and access management to VDC2. Connect the isolated VDCs, VDC1 and VDC2, using Cross Connect. In such a scenario, the sales team (VDC1) can only access the centralized resources from the IT operations team data center (VDC2) without additional infrastructure and administration. Still, the critical data of the sales and operation teams remain hidden. Moreover, upon scaling, the centralized resources can be shared via all the new data centers without the need for extra infrastructure or management. Thus, Cross Connect is cost efficient.

Scenario 2: Organizing resources in different VDCs based on the organizational structure

Precondition

Multiple organizational structures can exist within an organization. It becomes increasingly challenging to oversee several organizational structures as a business expands and to give roles and privileges in order to effectively manage resources.

Solution

Consider that your organization is handling multiple teams and each team works on separate projects. If you want a project (let's call it P1) to be accounted for separately, an ideal approach is to create a separate VDC for P1 and similarly have distinct VDCs for each team or project tightly coupled using Cross Connect over private LANs. This automatically creates a separate section on the IONOS bill each month for VDC P1 and all the associated VDCs. That way, you can have custom labels for resources, instances, cost centers, etc. Moreover, you can also:

• achieve an organizational separation for organizational, financial (cost and billing), and user management purposes. For example, you can configure VDC-Core for core infrastructure, VDC1 for production servers, VDC2 for development resources, VDC3 for monitoring services, etc.

• assign relevant permissions to limit external users or partners via the . With valid permissions, they can create or manage the services. Additionally, Cross Connect can be used to provide access to functionality provided by such managed VDCs.

• allot specific privileges to a department. You may permit a project department to establish several data centers, for instance. After that, a distinct data center is established by the project department solely for project accountability.

The Workspace allows you to associate multiple VDCs with each other, via a LAN, with an existing Cross Connect or you can also create a connection instantly. For more information about how to create a connection instantly using the + option, see .

Before connecting the VDCs to the Cross Connect, we recommend referring to the to ensure you meet all the requirements.

To connect VDCs via the Workspace, follow these steps:

1. Log in to with your username and password.

2. Click on the VDC that you want to connect with other VDCs by means of a Cross Connect.

3. Drag a Cross Connect element from the Palette to the Workspace.

4. Connect the Cross Connect element to a private LAN to establish a connection. Ensure the IP addresses in use meet the requirements. For more information, see and .

5. Select the Cross Connect element in the Workspace.

6. From the drop-down list in the Inspector pane, select an existing connection to associate your VDC with it. The list displays the connections that belong to the same region and are under the same contract and also new Cross Connects that are not assigned to any VDC. You can also click + to instantly create a new connection to associate a new connection with the VDC.

1. Make further changes to your data center, if necessary. This is optional.

2. Provision your changes.

Users need appropriate privileges to use, modify, and share a Cross Connect. Without necessary privileges, users have a read-only access and cannot provision changes. You can grant appropriate privileges via the User Manager.

To allow users to create Cross Connects, follow these steps:

1. Log in to with your username and password.

2. In the DCD menu, select Management > Users & Groups under Users.

3. Select Groups tab in the User Manager window.

4. Select the appropriate group to assign relevant privileges.

5. In the Privileges tab, select the Create Cross Connects checkbox to allow the group members to create and use Cross Connects.

This section lists the limitations of Cross Connect:

• Ensure all NICs used for the Cross Connect connection are within the same IP range. You may also consider using your own DHCP server as an option. For the time being, we recommend that you verify the IP addresses of the VDCs manually. IONOS is constantly working to improve the existing products and implement an automatic check to verify the IP addresses automatically in the future.

• An IP address may not be used in more than one instance.

• You can use a Cross Connect to connect between all your VDCs in the following regions only: gb/lhr, and de/fra. Other regions may have restrictions on the connectable VDCs.

You can disassociate a LAN from the Cross Connect if you no longer want them to be connected. Before deleting a Cross Connect, ensure you have removed all the associated VDCs.

To remove a VDC from a Cross Connect, follow these steps:

1. Log in to DCD with your username and password.

2. Open the required data center.

3. In the Workspace, select the required Cross Connect element.

4. In the Inspector pane, set Connect with to Unconnected.

1. Provision your changes.

Cross Connect APIs allows contract owners, administrators, and authenticated users with the required permissions to create a cross connect and associate it with VDCs via the API.

If you no longer need a Cross Connect, you can easily remove it via the Manage Cross Connects window, provided it is disconnected from all LANs in the connected data centers.

To delete a Cross Connect, follow these steps:

1. Log in to DCD with your username and password.

2. Go to the menu, and click Network > Cross Connect.

3. Select the required Cross Connect in the Manage Cross Connects window.

4. Ensure that you first disssociate the following from the Cross Connect:

• any LANs associated with it. You will find the list of LANs in the Connected LANs tab.

• any VDCs linked with it. The Connectable Data Centers lists the VDCs.

1. Click Delete to proceed with deletion.

2. Click OK in the Delete Cross Connect dialog to confirm your action.

After creating a Cross Connect, you can manage it via the Manage Cross Connects window.

To manage or edit a Cross Connect, follow these steps:

1. Log in to DCD with your username and password.

2. Go to the menu, and click Network > Cross Connect.

3. Select the required Cross Connect in the Manage Cross Connects window. You will see the following tabs:

Assigning permissions to a Group

To grant modify and share permissions to the group members, follow these steps:

1. Log in to DCD with your username and password.

2. In the DCD menu, select Management > Users & Groups under Users.

3. Select Groups tab in the User Manager window.

4. Select the appropriate group to assign relevant permissions.

5. In the Resources of Group tab, click Grant Access, and select a VDC from the list to grant appropriate permissions to the group:

   • Edit: Select the checkbox to allow the users in the group to modify the selected Cross Connect.

   • Share: Select the checkbox to allow the users in the group to share the Cross Connect.

To modify a Cross Connect via the API, perform a PATCH request with the ID of the respective Cross Connect.

Request

Response

202 Successful operation

To associate a Cross Connect with your VDC and the configured private LAN, you can perform the following API calls:

• POST creates a LAN and connects it to a Cross Connect in a single API call.

• PUT or PATCH can be used to update the corresponding /lan resource.

Request

The following is an example of a PUT operation:

Response

202 Successful operation

To set user privileges via the Cloud API for managing Cross Connect, follow these steps:

1. Authenticate to the Cloud API using your API credentials.

2. Create a user using the POST /cloudapi/v6/um/users endpoint.

3. Set the following required parameters for the user: user's name, email address, and password.

4. Create a group using the POST /cloudapi/v6/um/groups endpoint.

5. Set createPcc privilege to true.

6. Assign the user to the created group using POST /cloudapi/v6/um/groups/{groupId}/users endpoint.

To create a Cross Connect via the API, perform a POST request with the name and description of the Cross Connect.

Request

   curl --location \
   --request POST 'https://api.ionos.com/cloudapi/v6/pccs' \
   --header 'Content-Type: application/json' \
   --header 'Authorization: Basic <auth-token>' \
   --data '{
            "properties": 
            {
             "name": "CrossConnect-Berlin",
             "description": "Cross Connect between datacenter '\''Berlin-W1'\'' and datacenter '\''Berlin-W2'\'' "
            }
           }'

Response

202 Successful operation

{
    "id": "f7a9c1-815a-486f-bb7b-3d0f2",
    "type": "pcc",
    "href": "https://api.ionos.com/cloudapi/v6/pccs/f7a9c1-815a-486f-bb7b-3d0f2",
    "metadata": {
        "createdDate": "2023-09-18T12:02:16Z",
        "createdBy": "xyz@ionos.com",
        "etag": "5409657baffecf",
        "lastModifiedDate": "2023-09-18T12:02:16Z",
        "lastModifiedBy": "xyz@ionos.com",
        "state": "BUSY"
    },
    "properties": {
        "name": "CrossConnect-Berlin",
        "description": "Cross Connect between datacenter 'Berlin-W1' and datacenter 'Berlin-W2' ",
        "peers": [],
        "connectableDatacenters": []
    }
}

For more information about the request and response fields, see Create a Cross Connect.

To delete a Cross Connect via the API, perform a DELETE request with the ID of the respective Cross Connect.

Request

   curl --location \
  --request DELETE 'https://api.ionos.com/cloudapi/v6/pccs/287acd-d1d2-40f0-bfb3-861d999' \
  --header 'Authorization: Basic <auth-token>'

Response

202 Successful operation

For more information about the request and response fields, see Delete Cross Connects.

We recommend upgrading your existing version of the Cross Connect to its latest version. The latest version of the feature comes with additional capabilities that will allow you to connect all VDCs in the same region.

You can either upgrade a Cross Connect from the Inspector pane or via the Manage Cross Connects window.

Upgrade from the Inspector pane

To upgrade from the Inspector pane, follow these steps:

1. Log in to DCD with your username and password.

2. Select the VDC, which is connected to other VDCs via the Cross Connect, from the list.

3. Choose the Cross Connect element on the Workspace to view its properties in the Inspector pane.

4. Click Upgrade.

Upgrade via the Manage Cross Connects window

To upgrade, follow these steps:

1. Log in to DCD with your username and password.

2. Go to the menu, and click Management > Cross Connect.

4. Click Upgrade.

What is Cross Connect?

Cross Connect is a feature designed to connect multiple VDCs in the same region and contract using a private LAN. With Cross Connect, you can ensure safe data passage between the VDCs, reduce latency and improve performance compared to public connectivity.

What are the benefits of Cross Connect?

Cross Connects are reliable and resistant to network congestion as the data transfers quickly between the connected VDCs. In addition, it facilitates resource sharing between the connected VDCs, reducing the cost of redundant virtual infrastructure setups. For additional benefits offered by Cross Connect, see Overview.

Can I connect VDCs across regions via Cross Connect?

No, currently Cross Connect enables you to connect VDCs within a region. For example, you can connect multiple VDCs in Berlin, but you cannot connect a VDC that is in Frankfurt. Note that the NICs of the VDCs must belong to the same IP address range.

Can I upgrade my existing Cross Connect to the latest version?

Yes, you can upgrade your existing Cross Connect to the latest version. For more information, see Upgrade Cross Connect to the latest version.

Why should I upgrade my Cross Connect?

The upgraded version of the feature allows you to connect all VDCs within the same region. Also, the previous version of the product will be deprecated in the future. Hence, we recommend that you upgrade the existing version of your Cross Connect to its latest version. For more information about upgrading the feature, see Upgrade Cross Connect to the latest version.

Is the price for the upgraded version different from the previous version?

No, both versions are free to use and do not incur any additional costs.

Does Cross Connect support SDKs?

Yes, Cross Connect supports all the SDKs listed in the Compute Engine SDKs section of Developer Reference.

Do you have a list of cloud tools that Cross Connect supports?

Cross Connect supports the following cloud tools:

• Terraform

• Ansible

• Chef Knife

• Puppet

• IonosCTL CLI

What is the supported bandwidth?

Cross Connect provides a network bandwidth comparable to normal private Network Interface Cards (NICs).

What are the current limitations of Cross Connect?

Cross Connect has its own set of limitations. For more information, see Limitations of Cross Connect.