CloudFront

CLoudFront

• A CDN (Content Delivery Network) service by AWS
• TLDR; A network of edge locations that cache content. Also makes sure that requests are send to the nearest edge location

• If you don’t set up CloudFront, all requests will go directly to the AWS data centers (Regions & AZs)
• The distribution itself is global (no need to choose region)
  • In config, when you pick an origin domain you pick one that is placed in a certain region
• Something you want to add to all websites
• diagram
• You create distributions
  • A distribution is the configuration you create in AWS CloudFront to define how content is delivered through the CDN (Content Delivery Network) (edge locations). It acts as a set of rules for distributing your content efficiently.
  • can create multiple distributions and distribute all kinds of content (websites, files, etc)
  • define distribution behaviors - how content should be forwarded, cached, stored
  • define which content should be distributed with CloudFront
  • set logging, SSL, security settings
• You content is cached in these edge locations
  • you control how it’s cached with caching policies
  • connect caching policies to the distributions & have fine grained control over when data is updated
• Advanced features
  • U can define code that should be executed as requests reach those edge locations (ex. manipulate requests/responses)

Distributions

• 🚀 When you create 1 CloudFront distribution, you’re enabling content delivery across AWS’s entire global network of edge locations!
• You can use just one distribution for most scenarios
• When you create a single distribution, AWS automatically uses multiple edge locations to cache and serve your content.
• You don’t manually create edge locations—CloudFront manages them dynamically.

Config

• Create a distribution
• Configure Origin Domain
  • the URL of the original content source that CloudFront fetches data from when it’s not cached in edge locations
  • choosing the content source to cache
  • (e.g., an S3 bucket, an EC2 instance, or an external server)
• Set the name
  • domain is automatically generated like many other AWS services
  • or you could also assign a custom domain using Route 53, because that’s possible using an alias w/ Route 53 that points to a CloudFront distribution
• You configure behaviors, including:
  • Caching policies (how long content stays cached at edge locations)
  • Request forwarding rules (what requests go to the origin vs. being served from cache)
  • Security settings (SSL/TLS, authentication)
• CloudFront distributes the content → Edge locations cache and serve content based on your policies.