Improving Global Content Efficiency with CloudFront Regional Edge Caches & Origin Shield

AMJ Cloud Technologies collaborated with a digital media company to enhance their global content delivery system using Amazon CloudFront’s advanced caching features. This case study showcases how we leveraged Regional Edge Caches and Origin Shield to reduce latency, optimize cache efficiency, and minimize infrastructure load.

Situation

The client, a digital media company serving millions of users worldwide, faced performance challenges delivering high volumes of video, image, and document-based content. Users in regions with less localized infrastructure, such as parts of Africa and Southeast Asia, experienced sluggish load times due to frequent edge cache expirations, forcing requests to travel back to the centralized S3-hosted origin. Additionally, managing frequent content updates was costly and inefficient due to reliance on cache invalidations.

Task

Our team was tasked with designing an optimized content delivery architecture to meet the following objectives:

• Reduce latency for users in underserved regions like Africa and Southeast Asia.
• Minimize origin fetches caused by edge cache misses.
• Ensure content freshness without high invalidation costs.
• Decrease backend infrastructure load to improve cost-efficiency.
• Maintain high availability and scalability for global traffic.

The project was executed by a team of cloud architects and DevOps engineers over a 2.5-month timeline.

Action

To achieve these objectives, we redesigned the client’s CDN strategy using Amazon CloudFront’s advanced caching layers and optimization techniques:

1. Regional Edge Caches:

   • Enabled Regional Edge Caches to serve as a secondary caching layer between edge locations and the origin.
   • Configured longer TTLs for less frequently accessed content, reducing origin requests and ensuring faster cache hits after edge cache expirations.

2. Origin Shield Implementation:

   • Deployed CloudFront Origin Shield in a centralized AWS region to consolidate cache misses from edge and regional caches.
   • Reduced multiple origin fetches to a single request, enhancing cache efficiency and minimizing backend load.

3. Optimized Cache Management:

   • Implemented Object Versioning (e.g., image-v2.jpg) to ensure content freshness without frequent cache invalidations.
   • Set intelligent TTL values based on content type, balancing freshness and cache hit ratios to minimize propagation delays and costs.

4. Custom Monitoring and Reporting:

   • Utilized AWS CloudWatch to create dashboards monitoring cache hit ratios across edge, regional, and Origin Shield layers.
   • Enabled proactive tuning of TTLs and content strategies based on real-time performance metrics.

The team conducted performance testing, simulated cache miss scenarios, and optimized caching policies to ensure global reliability and efficiency.

Result

The enhanced CloudFront architecture delivered significant outcomes:

• 38% Improvement in Global Cache Hit Ratio: Regional Edge Caches and Origin Shield reduced origin fetches, boosting performance.
• Up to 50% Faster Load Times in Remote Regions: Improved user experience in high-latency areas like Southeast Asia and South America.
• 60% Reduction in Origin Load: Origin Shield minimized S3 and EC2 traffic, lowering costs and enhancing stability.
• Improved Content Freshness with Lower Costs: Object versioning eliminated reliance on costly invalidations.
• Scalable and Resilient System: Prepared the platform for sustained global growth.

This optimized architecture has become a reference for AMJ Cloud Technologies’ content delivery projects, demonstrating our expertise in advanced CDN solutions.

Technologies Used

• Amazon CloudFront: Delivered content via global edge locations.
• Regional Edge Caches: Cached less frequent content for faster delivery.
• CloudFront Origin Shield: Consolidated origin requests.
• Amazon S3: Hosted origin content.
• AWS CloudWatch: Monitored cache performance.
• Object Versioning: Managed content freshness.

Key Use Cases

This architecture is suitable for:

• Digital media platforms delivering high-volume content globally.
• E-commerce and streaming services requiring low-latency delivery.
• Applications needing efficient content updates and cost management.

Ready to optimize your global content delivery? Contact us to explore how AMJ Cloud Technologies can help.

Key Takeaways

This case study highlights the power of CloudFront’s Regional Edge Caches and Origin Shield in building efficient, low-latency content delivery systems. By leveraging advanced caching and AWS services, we enhanced user experience, reduced costs, and ensured scalability for a global digital media platform. AMJ Cloud Technologies is dedicated to delivering innovative cloud solutions for content optimization.

Architectural Diagram