Amazon CloudFront is a fast content delivery network (CDN) service that securely delivers data, videos, applications, and APIs to customers globally with low latency, high transfer speeds, all within a developer-friendly environment.
Amazon CloudFront is a web service that speeds up distribution of your static and dynamic web content, such as .html, .css, .js, and image files, to your users. CloudFront delivers your content through a worldwide network of data centers called edge locations.
When a user requests content that you’re serving with CloudFront, the request is routed to the edge location that provides the lowest latency (time delay), so that content is delivered with the best possible performance.
As an example, suppose that you’re serving an image from a traditional web server, not from CloudFront. For example, you might serve an image, sunsetphoto.png, using the URL http://example.com/sunsetphoto.png.
Your users can easily navigate to this URL and see the image. But they probably don’t know that their request is routed from one network to another — through the complex collection of interconnected networks that comprise the internet — until the image is found.
How Does Amazon CloudFront Work?
CloudFront works perfectly with any AWS origin, like Amazon S3, Amazon EC2, Elastic Load Balancing, or any custom HTTP origin. With secure and programmable edge computing tools like CloudFront Functions and AWS Lambda @Edge, you can change how CloudFront delivers your content.
You build a CloudFront distribution to tell CloudFront where you want content to be delivered from and how to track and manage content delivery. Then, CloudFront uses computers—called edge servers—near your viewers to quickly send that information to them when they want to see or use it.
- You specify origin servers, like an Amazon S3 bucket or your own HTTP server, from which CloudFront gets your files which will then be distributed from CloudFront edge locations all over the world.
- You upload your files to your original servers. Your files, also known as objects, typically include web pages, images, and media files etc. If you’re using an Amazon S3 bucket as an origin server, you can make the objects in your bucket publicly readable, so that anyone who knows the CloudFront URLs for your objects can access them. You also have the option of keeping objects private and controlling who accesses them.
- You create a CloudFront distribution, which tells CloudFront which origin servers to get your files from when users request the files through your web site or application.
- CloudFront assigns a domain name to your new distribution that you can see in the CloudFront console, or that is returned in the response to a programmatic request, for example, an API request. If you like, you can add an alternate domain name to use instead.
- CloudFront sends your distribution’s configuration (but not your content) to all of its edge locations or points of presence (POPs)— collections of servers in geographically-dispersed data centers where CloudFront caches copies of your files.
As you develop your website or application, you use the domain name that CloudFront provides for your URLs.
Key benefits of amazon CloudFront
● Global Scaled Network for Fast Content Delivery
● Deep Integration with AWS
● Security at the Edge
● Highly Programmable and Secure Edge Computing
● Cost-Effective
Amazon CloudFront VS AWS CloudFormation
● AWS’s Amazon CloudFront is a service for delivering information over a content delivery network (CDN). It lets you send your website, apps, videos, and other material to users around the world quickly and with low latency.
● On the other hand, AWS CloudFormation is a service that lets you run your system as code. It lets you build and manage AWS resources in a consistent way that is done automatically. It uses JSON or YAML templates to describe the infrastructure and set up the right tools.
● Amazon CloudFront is mostly about delivering and caching information. It stores your material in a network of edge locations around the world and sends it to users as quickly as possible. It can speed up the delivery of information that doesn’t change, like web pages, images, videos, and APIs.
● On the other hand, AWS CloudFormation is used to set up and manage a wide variety of AWS services, not just CloudFront. It lets you create and deploy infrastructure as code, such as EC2 instances, RDS databases, S3 buckets, IAM rules, and more.
● Amazon CloudFront is usually used by developers and content creators who want to make their websites and apps run faster and be able to handle more traffic. It can be combined with other AWS services like S3, EC2, and Route 53 to make a full system for delivering content.
● On the other hand, system administrators, DevOps teams, and developers use AWS CloudFormation to automate and handle their infrastructure in a way that can be repeated and scaled. It helps make sure everything is the same and lowers the chance of making mistakes when setting up AWS resources by hand.
GEO-TARGETING IN AMAZON CLOUDFRONT
Geo-targeting is a way for businesses to show their audience personalized information based on where they are in the world without changing the URL. This lets you make content that fits the wants of the people in a certain area.
With Amazon CloudFront, we can find out which country end users are in when they ask for our material. Amazon CloudFront can send this information to our Origin server. A new HTTP header is used to send it.
Different versions of the same content can have different information based on where they are being used. These versions can be saved at different Edge Locations that are closer to the end users in that country.
This way, we can reach out to our end users based on where they live.
AMAZON CLOUDFRONT INVALIDATION
You can use Amazon CloudFront to remove one or more files from all edge sites before the files’ expiration dates. The invalidation tool is helpful when something unexpected happens, like when you need to remove a CSS file from Amazon CloudFront because it has been changed.
Invalidation can also help if offensive or possibly dangerous content needs to be taken down before the expiration time.
Note: There is no extra charge for invalidating the first 1,000 files each month but invalidating each file after those costs $0.005.
If you need to get rid of a file from the CloudFront edge caches before it ends, you can do one of the following: Get the file out of the edge caches. The next time a user asks for the file, CloudFront goes back to the source to get the most recent version.
CONCLUSION
In conclusion, Amazon CloudFront is a powerful and reliable CDN that offers fast content delivery, seamless connection with AWS services, scalability, and strong security features. CloudFront can help businesses improve their online profile and give their customers a better online experience.
The large network of edge sites is one of the best things about Amazon CloudFront. These edge locations are spread out around the world in a smart way and are used to store information locally. When a user asks for content, CloudFront sends the request to the edge location closest to the user.
This cuts down on the distance and time it takes to serve the content. This makes pages open faster and gives users a better experience.
Amazon CloudFront also works well with other AWS services, which makes it a good choice for businesses that are already using the AWS platform. It is easy to connect to services like Amazon S3, EC2, and Lambda, which makes scaling and distributing material more efficient.
Another good thing about Amazon CloudFront is that it can handle a lot of traffic without slowing down. It automatically changes the number of resources based on how much demand there is. This makes sure that material is delivered quickly even during busy times.
Consider a global e-commerce website as an example of how Amazon CloudFront can be useful. With CloudFront, the website can send pictures and videos of products to users all over the world with less delay. This makes the general shopping experience better for users, which could lead to happier customers and more sales.
