CDN zones are part of the Content Delivery Network’s architecture where the content is located for distribution or from which the content is to be distributed.
Creating or adding a CDN zone requires you to specify the location of your files. There are three available options – your files are located at your own server (Custom location), in the Universal CDN Cloud Storage container (UCDN Storage), or you can set your Amazon S3 storage as origin if your files are located there.
To create a CDN zone, follow the steps outlined below:
1. Log in to the Universal CDN Control Panel at my.ucdn.com.
2. Navigate to the My Zones tab located in the top left corner.
3. Navigate to the New File zone button located in the top right corner.
4. Specify the location of your files.
5. Specify the size of your resources.
Universal CDN allows the resources to be stored in the following locations:
UCDN Storage
Instead of storing your content on your own server, you can store it on Universal Cloud Storage Servers in two locations – in Europe and North America.
Custom location
The Universal CDN will pull the data from your own server on request and then cache it for the specified time.
You need to enter the scheme (HTTP/HTTPS), the host address of your origin, and the port that should be used.
You can add more than one origin by clicking on the Add origin button and specify the origin weights.
Weighted load balancing allows you to set a relative weight for each origin (or backup origin) server in a CDN zone. The weights determine the amount of traffic sent to available origins within a CDN zone.
If the specified origin became unhealthy, the traffic will be rebalanced to the remaining available origins (if any) following their respective weights.
IMPORTANT! When setting up the weight of the origins, please note the following:
– The default weight is 100.
– The value of each origin’s weight must be between 1 and 100 (only integers are accepted as weight values).
– If no weight is entered, the default value of 100 will be assigned to the origin, distributing traffic equally among the active origins.
– Same rules will be applied to the BackUp Endpoints (Backup origin).
There are two more optional features that can be enabled for your custom location:
1. HTTP access is protected – Check this option if your origin requires authentication in order for the files to be accessed. You will have to enter a valid username/password.
2. Make UCDN access my origin using this host header – Define a different host header with which your origin will be accessed.
S3 secured
If your assets are stored in Amazon S3 (Amazon Simple Storage Service) you need to choose from the allowed locations.
To configure the S3 as an origin to your resources, it is mandatory to fill the information in the following fields:
My AWS s3 location, Bucket name, Access key, Signing key/Secret key. For detailed information, please read the following article:
How to Configure S3 bucket as an Origin to my Resources using an AWS Secret Key?
After making any changes in the Universal CDN Control Panel do not forget to click on the Save Changes button.
Limit Access Using a Secret Key