Single service comparison

The core equivalent layer is Huawei Direct Connect (DC), which also maps physical ports, virtual gateways, and virtual interfaces onto a VPC. DC divides objects into Connection (physical port), Virtual Gateway (VPC-side anchor), and Virtual Interface (the BGP/static logical link); GCP splits this into Interconnect attachments and Cloud Routers. GCP attachments bind 802.1Q VLANs to a single Cloud Router pair, while DC virtual interfaces are separate objects you peer with explicit remote gateways, so topology and VLAN/attachment modeling differ rather than being drop-in equivalent.

Scaling and HA differ in assembly. GCP expects you to order two redundant Dedicated Interconnect links in distinct metros for the 99.99% SLA and propagate via BGP over parallel attachments; DC similarly supports active/active or active/standby pairs (a best practice references two BGP connections) and up to 100 Gbit/s per port, but you are responsible for the carrier-provisioned last mile and port diversity per Huawei locations. Inter-region connectivity in GCP is handled through Cloud Router + VPC Network Peering or Partner Interconnect; on Huawei use Enterprise Router (ER) to interconnect VPCs and the DC gateway, since DC alone does not transit between VPCs.

Operational responsibility and integration surfaces diverge. GCP exposes Interconnect attachments as API resources managed like other Compute/VPC objects with Google-side monitoring (Cloud Logging/Monitoring); DC is managed through its console/API and integrates with VPC route tables, ER, and Cloud Trace. Billing models also differ—GCP charges per interconnect port capacity plus egress, while Huawei bills connection resource-hours plus bandwidth plans and processed traffic. Do not assume feature parity for MACsec, capacity steps, or partner onboarding workflows; validate each on the target region before cutover.

Start with an assessment that maps every GCP interconnect location, VLAN attachment, BGP ASN, advertised/learned prefixes, MED/local-preference policy, and SLA topology. Identify the matching Huawei DC locations and carriers at the nearest colocation, confirm port speeds (up to 100 Gbit/s) and interface types (bare fiber, MSTP, MPLS VPN) are available, and decide whether a single DC plus Enterprise Router covers your VPC mesh or whether multiple regional DCs are needed. Do not assume a one-click migration exists; this is a physical-and-routing redesign.

Rebuild the topology in Huawei as Connection -> Virtual Gateway -> Virtual Interface per VPC, recreating BGP sessions (preferred over static routing for failover) and reapplying route prefix limits and AS-path filters. Use Enterprise Router to replace GCP cross-VPC and cross-region connectivity patterns that relied on Cloud Router peering, and reproduce GCP route priorities using ER route tables and DC BGP local-preference. Recreate redundant active/active or active/standby connection pairs using the documented two-connection BGP best practice to preserve the 99.99% target.

Validate before cutover with parallel running: announce test prefixes, verify bidirectional BGP convergence, latency, and MTU end-to-end across the new DC path, and run failover drills by depreferring one link. Migrate application traffic via weighted DNS or route-map shifts rather than a hard flag-day. Keep the GCP interconnect warm during the validation window so rollback is a prefix re-advertisement, and only decommission GCP ports after steady-state monitoring confirms equivalent throughput and convergence on DC.

Expect cost-model and governance gaps. GCP bills interconnect port capacity plus standard egress; Huawei bills DC connection resource-hours, bandwidth plans, ER resource-hours, and processed traffic, so re-derive TCO at peak load, retention, and cross-region/interconnect volumes. Confirm MACsec, capacity-change increments, partner ordering lead times, and quota per region on Huawei before committing, since these differ from GCP and may require architectural adjustments rather than a like-for-like lift.