Overview

What is Equinix Fabric?

Equinix Fabric is a globally distributed, on-demand virtual interconnection service.

Equinix Fabric gives you the ability to configure to a single port that directly, securely, and dynamically connects you to the globally distributed digital ecosystem provided by the Equinix platform.

Customers use Equinix Fabric portals to make connections between:

• Cloud Service Providers - CSP and NSP providers and their customers
• Enterprises - Equinix customers and their vendors and partners
• Myself - Other customer instances deployed at Equinix

Customers access the functionality of Equinix Fabric via the Equinix Fabric web portal and the associated RESTful APIs.

What are Equinix Fabric APIs?

The Equinix Fabric APIs are a collection of RESTful APIs that allow you to programmatically create, order, monitor and delete private virtual ports that connect to Equinix Fabric. (Refer API reference section or Catalog for more details.)

For more information on Equinix Fabric and its associated products, see https://docs.equinix.com.

How do the Equinix APIs work?

When a customer onboards with the Equinix Developer Program, Equinix generates a set of user credentials for the user's Developer Program account.

Get the credentials for a user account by logging in to the Developer Program.

Using the provided credentials, the customer can obtain their OAuth credentials (a Consumer ID and Secret):

With the app's OAuth credentials in hand, you can authorize the Equinix API calls you make from your app to the Equinix servers.

Equinix Fabric Cloud Service Provider Workflow

Get the Application Keys from your CSP

Step 1 - Get the connection credentials, or "customer keys," from the cloud service provider you are configuring. For example, the Account ID for AWS, or the Service Key for Azure.

Get your OAuth Authorization Tokens

Step 2 - Get an OAuth access token, and its associated refresh token, by making a call to the the Equinix OAuth API (/oauth2/v1/token) with the Consumer key and theOAuth credentials assigned to your Equinix Developer Program application.

When you make the request to the authorization API, the API gateway makes an OAuth call to the identity provider using the credentials you specify in the call. The identity provider returns the short-lived OAuth access token and its associated refresh token, via the API gateway.

The API Request flow

Step 3 - Using a valid OAuth access token to authorize a request, make a call to an API method with the required headers and payload.

The API gateway validates the request and calls the relevant API. The response is sent back to the client via the API gateway.

Returning the Response to the User

Step 4 - After receiving the response, the client can acknowledge the connection and response to the user using either the cloud service provider's console,or via the Equinix Fabric portal and custom API apps.

Equinix Fabric Enterprise Workflow

Authorization flow

Step 1 - Get an OAuth access token, and its associated refresh token, by making a call to the the Equinix OAuth API (/oauth2/v1/token) with the OAuth credentials assigned to your Equinix Developer Program application.

When you make the request to the authorization API, the API gateway makes an OAuth call to the identity provider using the credentials you specify in the call. The identity provider returns the short-lived OAuth access token and its associated refresh token, via the API gateway.

API Request flow

Step 2 - Using a valid OAuth access token to authorize a request, make a call to an Equinix API method with the required headers and payload.

The API gateway validates the request and calls the relevant API. The response is sent back to the client via the API gateway.

Returning the Response to the User

Step 3 - After receiving the response, the client can acknowledge the connection and response to the user using the Equinix Fabric portal and custom API apps.