Cloudfront

What is cloudfront?

• It is a CDN which have 2 types of distributions
  1. Web distribution: fFor static and dynamic content, media files.
  2. RTMP: It is used to speed up the distribution of streaming media files using Adobe Flash’s RTMP (Real-Time Messaging Protocol). Using this the user can begin playing - the file before it’s downloaded from the server.

• Origin is the actual location where the resource is (it can be S3), Edge is where the user.
• Edge location will cache the data for some period called TTL (Time To Live)
• Distribution is the name given to the CDN, which is the collection of edge locations. 💡
• You can clear the contents in the cache, but you will be charged for this.
• Invalidation removes the objects from the edge cache.
• /* will invalidate everything.
• Creating and deleting distribution takes some time.

Remember

• The invalidation API is the fastest way to remove a file or object, although it will typically incur additional costs.
• First, remove the file from the origin servers; then set the expiration time on the CloudFront distribution to 0 to remove the file from the CloudFront
• RDS instance can be an origin server.
• You can read and write objects directly to an edge location. You cannot delete or update them directly; only the CloudFront service can handle that.
• CloudFront allows interaction via CloudFormation, the AWS CLI, the AWS console, the AWS CLI, the AWS APIs, and the various SDKs that AWS provides.
• CloudFront can front several AWS services: AWS Shield, S3, ELBs (including ALBs), and EC2 instances.
• CloudFront automatically provides AWS Shield (standard) to protect from DDoS, and it also can integrate with AWS WAF and AWS Shield advanced. These combine to secure content at the edge.
• CloudFront is easy to set up and lets you create a global content delivery network without contracts. It’s also a mechanism for distributing content at low latency.
• When you create a CloudFront distribution, you register a domain name for your static and dynamic content. This domain should then be used by clients.
• There is no charge associated with data moving from any region to a CloudFront edge location.
• CloudFront supports a variety of origin servers, including a non-AWS origin server. It supports EC2 regardless of region, as well. It does not support RDS or SNS.
• Edge locations can be set to have a 0-second expiration period, which effectively means no caching occurs.
• CloudFront can distribute content from an ELB, rather than directly interfacing with S3, and can do the same with a Route 53 record set. These allow the content to come from multiple instances.
• CloudFront serves content from origin servers, usually static files, and dynamic responses. These origin servers are often S3 buckets for static content and EC2 instances for dynamic content.

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