Everything we say about Alibaba Cloud in Dubai, with where we read it and when. If a source changes, this page changes with it.
Checked
25 September 2026
Next check
December 2026
Part one
The region itself
Drawing
01 · Region me-east-1, Dubai
Shows
Two zones; private links in at four points
Source
Alibaba Cloud documentation
Checked
25 Sep 2026 · schematic, not to scale
1.1Name and codeUAE (Dubai), known in Alibaba's systems as me-east-1.
1.2ZonesTwo: me-east-1a and me-east-1b. A workload built across both survives the loss of either.
1.3Opened21 November 2016, with YVOLV, a venture of Alibaba Cloud and Meraas. It was the first public cloud region in the Middle East.
1.4Second data centreLaunched on 14 October 2025, during GITEX Global.
1.5Private linksExpress Connect meets your own network at four Dubai points: three in Equinix facilities and one at Khazna.
1.6CertificationAlibaba states that its Dubai data centres hold the DESC CSP certificate, which Dubai government and semi-government bodies require of a cloud provider.
1.7What comes nextOn 23 September 2026 Alibaba said it would add data-centre capacity in the UAE within a year. It gave no dates or details, and neither do we.
Part two
Services, one by one
● offered○ not confirmed✕ absent
●Elastic Compute Serviceboth zones
●Container Service for KubernetesPro, dedicated, Serverless Pro, Edge Pro
●Elastic Container Instancezone A only
●Object Storage Serviceno dual-stack endpoint
●File Storage NASgeneral-purpose and extreme
●ApsaraDB RDSMySQL in zone B since October 2025
●Tair, Redis-compatiblecloud-native mode, both zones
●Data Transmission Servicesingle zone
●Elasticsearchsince September 2026
●Application Load Balancerboth zones
●Cloud Enterprise Networktransit router, both zones
●Express Connectfour access points
●Web Application Firewall 3.0
●Anti-DDoS Basic · Cloud Firewall
●PAI · EAS and AI Workspaceother PAI tools are not listed for Dubai
○GPU instance familiesnot stated publicly; checked per account
✕Model Studio, the Qwen APIits regions exclude the UAE
“Not confirmed” means Alibaba's public documentation does not say. We check those services against your account before the assessment is written.
Part three
Alibaba arrived first. Three others have followed.
Alibaba Cloud is not the only sensible answer for a company in the UAE, and we would rather you chose it knowing the alternatives. These are the public facts about each provider's regions here.
Provider, region
Opened
Zones
Alibaba CloudUAE (Dubai)
2016
2
Microsoft AzureUAE North, Dubai
2019
3
Oracle CloudUAE East, Dubai
2020
1
Oracle CloudUAE Central, Abu Dhabi
2021
1
Amazon Web ServicesMiddle East (UAE)
2022
3
Google Cloudno UAE region; the nearest is Doha
—
—
Provider announcements and region documentation, checked 25 September 2026. Oracle counts availability domains. Azure's Abu Dhabi region is restricted and is not listed.
Need a service this file marks as unconfirmed?
We check it against your account before the assessment is written, and the answer goes on its first page.