Overview
CDN accounts can contain subaccounts, down to seven levels deep, if the ability to create subaccounts has been enabled.
Subaccounts are useful for resellers and large organizations that prefer to sign a single CDN service contract and then provide individual subaccounts to multiple groups within the organization.
All of the billing and management functions are rolled up to the parent-level account, so customers that have the ability to create subaccounts are free to create as many accounts as they choose. The number of subaccounts that can be created is limited based upon a per-account basis, but this value can be increased upon request.
To request an increase in your subaccount limit, please contact Support.
Accessing Subaccounts
Subaccounts are managed by clicking on the Services box from the top right corner of the StrikeTracker portal. This opens a window where you can select Admin and from there, you an click on Subaccounts on the left side of the page.
In order to be able to create a subaccount, an account must have the Allow Subaccount Creation checkbox checked, and the number of existing subaccounts must be less than the value of the configured maximum number of subaccounts.
While many of the fields on your own account's Overview view may be self-edited, only a user belonging to a direct or indirect parent account can change the value of the fields related to your own account's subaccount creation restrictions.
Creating a Subaccount
To create a subaccount, navigate to the Subaccounts tab, click the Add Account button to add subaccounts to this account. You are also required to add services and contact information for the subaccounts.
After adding an account, remember to also add some Services to the account's services list, and possibly one or more Users.
In addition to the previously-mentioned subaccount creation enablement settings, in order for a user to create a subaccount they must be an Administrator, or have sufficient permissions to allow creation of the account.
For accounts directly below the account that owns the user, the user's Account"permission under the Permissions for the User's Account section must be set to Edit. For accounts that are two or more levels below the level of the account that owns the user, the user's Account permission under the Permissions for Subaccounts section must be set to Edit. For more information on user permissions, see the Users documentation page.
Administration in StrikeTracker
The CDN management portal can be used to instantly provision new customer accounts and administrate existing accounts on the CDN. Whenever a new customer is created using StrikeTracker, their accounts are enabled immediately.
With the release of the new version of StrikeTracker, the CDN account hierarchy introduces a new level of separation between the notion of accounts as they represent customers, vs. accounts as they represent CDN delivery configurations/resources.
The current system uses a single "account" concept to represent both notions, which has resulted in many customers being forced to create several subaccounts in order to break out their traffic across boundaries that are specific to that customer. As the system was originally designed to primarily support subaccounts for use by resellers, the built-in separations between these accounts with regard to user access, analytics, etc., has resulted in an account hierarchy that is suboptimal for many customer use cases.
The new hierarchy will alter the use of the word "account" to now represent "organizations", whether they be direct customers, sub-customers within resellers, etc., or simply sub-divisions within a particular customer where the separation between users/analytics, etc. was intended as they are today.
These accounts will be uniquely identified, but not with the current 8-character alphanumeric "customer hash" IDs that are in use under the ST1 model. In the ST2 model, "accounts" will not represent CDN configurations that result in an ability to actually use any particular service. Such configurations will remain under the current alphanumeric hash IDs. These configurations will become known as "partitions", will not be hierarchical, and multiple such partitions can be owned by a given account. For instance, the following hierarchy could be represented:
- Account: Highwinds
- Partition: q1w2e3r4
- Partition: w2e3r4t5
- Partition: e3r4t5y6
- Account: Direct Customer #1
- Partition: r4t5y6u7
- Partition: t5y6u7i8
- Account: Resold Customer A
- Partition: y6u7i8o9
- Account: Resold Customer B
- Partition: u7i8o9p0
- Account: Direct Customer #2
- Partition: i8o9p0q1
- Partition: o9p0q1w2
- etc.
Each account must contain at least one partition. Users are defined at the account level, and can be granted access to modify partitions and subaccount records at any level below the account where they have been created. Partitions cannot contain other partitions – they are a flat list at each account level. Hierarchy within the CDN is represented exclusively via accounts.
Sub Account Info
| Field | Required | Data Validation | Error Messages |
|---|---|---|---|
| Number Sub accounts allowed | Yes | Disabled if the account does not have the sub account creation account feature service. Must be a whole number equal to or greater than zero and less than 5000 | Enter a whole number equal to or greater than 0 and less than 5000 |
Billing Account Info
| Field | Required | Data Validation | Error Messages |
|---|---|---|---|
| Account Number | No | None |
Billing Contact
| Field | Required | Data Validation | Error Messages |
|---|---|---|---|
| First Name | Yes | None | First name is required |
| Last Name | Yes | None | Last name is required |
| Email Address | Yes | Must be a valid email address. | Enter a valid email address |
| Phone Number | Yes | None | Phone number is required |
| Fax number | No | None | Fax number is required |
| Address Line 1 | Yes | None | This field is required |
| Address Line 2 | No | None | |
| City | Yes | None | This field is required |
| State/Region | Yes | None | Please enter a State/Region |
| Postal Code | Yes | None | This field is required |
| Country | Yes | None | Please choose a country |