Overview

VOD provides a subapplication feature to enable you to isolate resources in it. This feature is an internal concept in VOD with respect to how resources are divided. A subapplication is similar to an independent VOD account. After a subapplication is created, the ownership of VOD resources will be as shown below:

Resources mentioned in this document include media files in VOD and their attributes, derivative files, configurations, CDN domain names, and statistics of VOD service usage.

Use cases

Below are some typical use cases for VOD subapplication:

• Multi-department/multi-business isolation: a company intends to develop its own products based on Tencent Cloud. Department A plans to use VOD to develop a UGSV application, and department B a movie and television website. These two VOD businesses need to be isolated from each other. However, out of financial considerations, the company cannot create an independent Tencent Cloud account for each department. In this case, the subapplication feature of VOD can be used to assign a subapplication to each department.
• Separation between production and test environments: if you want to test some VOD features (e.g., modifying the method of event notification or enabling hotlink protection) without affecting the operations of the production environment, you can create two subapplications, one for the production environment and one for the test environment. New features can be tested in the test environment first and then made available in the production environment after successful validation.

Role definition and ID

Roles in the VOD subapplication system include admin, primary application, and subapplication. Their definitions are as shown below.

1. After you activate the VOD service, you are in the default role of primary application, to which all VOD resources belong. The primary application ID is your Tencent Cloud APPID, which can be viewed in Account Info in the console.
2. After you enable the VOD subapplication feature, an admin role will be generated, which does not own any VOD resources, and all resources still belong to the primary application.
3. If you create a subapplication in the "admin" role, the new subapplication will have separate VOD resources. It is equivalent to and isolated from the primary application (which can be viewed as a special subapplication). When you create a subapplication, VOD will assign a globally unique ID to it, which is called subapplication ID. For more information on how to view the ID, please see Console Instructions - Application Management.
4. If you create another subapplication in the "admin" role, the new subapplication will have separate VOD resources too; the new subapplication, the primary application, and all other subapplications will be equal to and isolated from one another, and so on.

Unless otherwise specified, the primary application and subapplications will not be distinguished in the following sections and will be collectively referred to as subapplication.

Capabilities

The VOD subapplication system provides the following capabilities:

• Creating and setting subapplications: after you enable the VOD subapplication feature, you can create subapplications in the console as the admin and set the name and description for each subapplication.

• Disabling subapplications: all subapplications except the primary application can be disabled. When a subapplication is disabled, its VOD resources will not be cleared and other features such as video upload and transcoding will not be affected; instead, only its domain name will be disabled.

• Isolating resources: VOD resources of different subapplications are isolated from one another.

• You can manipulate VOD resources of any subapplications through the console or server APIs.

• Independent statistics are generated for each subapplication, such as storage usage, bandwidth/traffic, transcoding duration, video audit duration, and playback data.

• Aggregated statistics for all subapplications are provided.
  

  Limits

  The VOD subapplication system has the following limits:

• The name and description of the primary application cannot be modified.

• Subapplications cannot be deleted.

• Up to 50 subapplications can be created under one VOD account.

• No separate billing logic (such as billing mode, separate bill generation, and purchase of exclusive resource packages) can be set for subapplications. All subapplications under a VOD account belong to the same account, and all VOD usage data (including but not limited to VOD billable items such as storage, traffic, transcoding duration, and video audit duration) is aggregated for fee calculation and unified billing.
  

  Console Instructions

Enabling the subapplication feature

1. Log in to the VOD Console.
2. Click Enable Subapplication on the left sidebar to enter the subapplication enablement page.
3. Click Use now to enable the subapplication feature of VOD.

If the subapplication feature has already been enabled, Enable Subapplication on the left sidebar will be invisible.

Selecting a role

After the subapplication feature is enabled, a drop-down list will be displayed in the top-left corner of the VOD Console where you can select a role. If you have just enabled the subapplication feature, there are only two roles in the drop-down list: admin and primary application. After you create a subapplication, it will be displayed as a role in the drop-down list.

Admin

Under the admin role, the left sidebar displays the following entries: Service Overview, Applications, and Resource Packages.

• Service Overview: this page displays the VOD billing mode, aggregated key business data of all subapplications, and key business data of each subapplication.
  
• Applications: on this page, you can view, create, edit, or disable subapplications. Subapplication IDs are also displayed on this page.
• Resource Packages: on this page, you can view purchased resource packages and their usage.

If you are billed monthly, resource packages will not be available (existing resource packages are in "frozen" state). After you switch to daily billing, if a resource package is still within its validity period, it will be automatically unfrozen so that you can continue to it.

Subapplication

Under the subapplication role, usage of the VOD Console is basically the same as that before the subapplication feature is enabled, and you can view and manipulate the subapplication's VOD resources. The main difference lies in that the subapplication itself has no separate billing configuration.

Server API Instructions

After enabling the subapplication feature, you must specify the subapplication whose resources you want to access when using VOD Server APIs.

Specifying a subapplication in a server API

VOD server API has been upgraded to TencentCloud API 3.0. You can use the SubAppId parameter in each API to specify the subapplication you want to access. If you want to access the primary application, you can enter the primary application ID or leave this parameter empty.

• Server API 2017 documentation does not disclose the SubAppId parameter, which will not affect the use of it though.
• The SubAppId parameter is also involved in signature calculation for server APIs in the same calculation rule.

File Upload Instructions

After enabling the VOD subapplication feature, you must specify the subapplication to which you want to upload your media files.

Upload from server

Upload from server supports file upload to the specified subapplication. For more information on how to set the parameters, please visit the link below. If you want to upload files to the primary application, you can enter the primary application ID or leave the corresponding parameter empty.

Via SDK

• SDK for Java
• SDK for PHP
• SDK for Python
• SDK for Node.js
• SDK for Go

Via server APIs

The ApplyUpload and CommitUpload APIs will be used for upload. For more information, please see Specifying a Subapplication in a Server API.
You are strongly recommended to use the SDK for upload.

Upload from client

Upload from client allows you to upload files to the specified subapplication by adding vodSubAppId=xxx (xxx refers to the subapplication ID) to the signature for upload from client. If you want to upload files to the primary application, you can enter the primary application ID or leave this parameter empty.

• The vodSubAppId parameter is also involved in calculation of the signature for upload from client in the same calculation rule.

Upload from URL

Upload from URL allows you to upload files to the specified subapplication.

• Via the console: for more information, please see Console Instructions.
• Via Server API: use the PullUpload API. For more information, please see Specifying a Subapplication in a Server API.

Permission Management

VOD has been connected to CAM and supports authorization at subapplication level. For more information, please see Access Management.

FAQs

After the subapplication feature is enabled, will it affect existing business logic in the production environment?

No. The subapplication system is designed with compatibility in mind. If the subapplication ID is not specified, all server APIs will manipulate the primary application by default.

Will fees be charged for enabling the subapplication feature?

The subapplication feature itself is free of charge; however, resources consumed by each subapplication will be billed under the VOD account according to the VOD billing logic.

My company use the subapplication feature to implement business isolation. How can the internal settlement/cost allocation be implemented for each business?

As described in Limits, VOD only generates one aggregated bill for the entire account. If you have multiple businesses that require cost allocation, you can define and calculate the allocated costs based on the subapplication-level statistics provided by VOD.

What will happen to a subapplication if my VOD service is suspended?

If your VOD service is suspended due to arrears, all subapplications under your account will be disabled.

Can I migrate videos from one subapplication to another?

Resources of different subapplications are isolated, so resources of one subapplication cannot be migrated to another.