Yes. XcellHost uses Amazon’s Direct Connect capabilities to allow the high-speed transfer of data to and from Wasabi from Amazon’s other cloud services, such as EC2.

Public cloud object storage services like AWS S3 and XcellHost can be used to store videos. However, we do not recommend the playback of video directly from object storage (XcellHost or AWS S3) as the costs may be higher than expected and the delivery quality will be sub-optimal (as compared to solutions that pair object storage with a CDN and/or encoding/decoding functions). Further details on these points are provided below.

1. The business model with public cloud object storage is that egress traffic (i.e. downloads) from the storage service to the player location is generally chargeable on a per-GB basis*. The price is generally ₹1 per GB but if you are doing many downloads and the files are large, this can result in some meaningful egress fee charges. XcellHost does not charge for egress but our pricing model is not suitable for use cases involving the hosting of videos in a manner where the ratio of egress downloads exceeds the amount of storage.

2. Depending on the location of your video player and other network conditions, it may be necessary to utilize a content delivery network (CDN) service along with the storage service for the best quality video viewing experience.

Another benefit of using a CDN is that you can reduce the number of downloads from XcellHost. This is because if you have a video (for example) that is going to be played 100+ times, the CDN will generally download the file once (or just a few times) from XcellHost and then cache it for playback to many different users. The CDN caching is generally done in a location that is closer to the viewer, which results in a better viewing experience.

3. Public cloud storage services do not provide any encoding / decoding functions. This means (for example), if you store the video file in a format like .mp4 and you need the video player to receive the video in a different format, this function must be performed outside of the storage service.

Yes, Wasabi can be used to store primary or secondary copies of your data. Given the significant price and performance advantages that XcellHost provides over Amazon S3, there are advantages to using XcellHost for all data sets. However, XcellHost recognizes that given the incumbent nature of Amazon S3, some organizations may wish to continuing using Amazon S3 for their primary data set storage. In this scenario, XcellHost provides an inexpensive and highly durable storage repository for a secondary copy of your data.

XcellHost supports the AWS S3 API multipart upload capability that allows you to essentially 'chunk' a large file into separate parts that are automatically put back together as a single file when the file transmission is done. The benefit of this approach is that a large file can be uploaded more efficiently and in the event of a file transmission failure, the storage app can resume uploading with the part that failed (vs. starting at the beginning).

This AWS document provides a good explanation of how multipart upload works in the S3 API. XcellHost adheres to the approach described in this document with the following exception:

XcellHost does not currently support the AbortIncompleteMultipartUpload lifecycle action that allows you to configure a lifecycle policy that will delete aborted multiparts after a specified period of time. Instead, XcellHost uses a fixed value of 30 days. This means that after 30 days, any aborted multiparts are automatically deleted by XcellHost. XcellHost plans to support the AbortIncompleteMultipartUpload lifecycle action in a future release.

Aborted multiparts occur when a multipart upload begins but is not completed due to a planned (the sending app intentionally stops the multipart upload) or unplanned (the transmission of the part is unexpectedly interrupted). XcellHost, like AWS, bills for the storage associated with aborted multiparts as long as they are kept in the system as active storage or deleted storage that has not yet met the minimum storage retention period.

XcellHost works blockchain technology in the context of supporting the storage requirements of applications and use cases that leverage blockchain.
For example, you can use an application that utilizes blockchain technology for encryption or other purposes and XcellHost would seamlessly interface with this application over our S3 API or other methods.

The XcellHost infrastructure has been built using industry best practices for redundancy in data center design.

Yes, XcellHost can provide a response for the Higher Education Cloud Vendor Assessment Tool (HECVAT) to qualified higher education institutions.

To start using XcellHost, click the "Try It Free" button on the XcellHost web page. After setting up an account, please refer to the documentation on the XcellHost Help page to begin using XcellHost.

XcellHost supports several different secure Internet-based and private connection options.  For more information on the private connection options.