Amazon CloudFront : A Web Service for Content Delivery
on 18th Amazon has launched a beta version of a content delivery network called CloudFront. Its a pay-as-you-go service in the same pattern as the other Amazon Web Services are available. CloudFront gives end users low latency, high data transfer speeds, and no commitments. Amazon’s CloudFront uses Global Network of edge location that is requests are automatically routed to the nearest edge location, so end users get content with best possible performance. CloudFront uses Amazon’s existing cloud infrastructure to deliver HTTP content through a worldwide network of edge locations like US, Europe and Asia. Amazon CloudFront works seamlessly with Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3).
Amazon CloudFront Functionality
Amazon CloudFront gives a web service interface to developers. Amazon CloudFront, organizes objects into distributions. A distribution specifies the location of the original version of your objects. A distribution has a unique CloudFront.net domain name (e.g. abc123.cloudfront.net) that you can use to reference your objects through the network of edge locations. If you wish, you can also map your own domain name (e.g. images.example.com) to your distribution.
To use Amazon CloudFront, you:
- Store the original versions of your files in an Amazon S3 bucket.
- Create a distribution to register that bucket with Amazon CloudFront through a simple API call.
- Use your distribution’s domain name in your web pages or application. When end users request an object using this domain name, they are automatically routed to the nearest edge location for high performance delivery of your content.
- Pay only for the data transfer and requests that you actually use.
Amazon CloudFront Service Features
- Fast: CloudFront uses the edge location to deliver the content to end users that gives best possible performance to end users. CloudFront also gives the high, sustained data transfer rates needed to deliver large popular objects to end users at scale.
- Simple: A single API call lets you get started distributing content from your Amazon S3 bucket through the CloudFront network.
- Designed for use with other Amazon Web Services: Amazon CloudFront is tightly integrated with Amazon S3, which holds the definitive versions of your content. CloudFront also integrates with other AWS Services, like Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2). For instance, you can run a web server on Amazon EC2 to serve dynamic HTML pages, while delivering static content (i.e. images) through Amazon CloudFront.
- Cost-Effective: Amazon CloudFront passes on the benefits of Amazon’s scale to you. You pay only for the content that you deliver through the network, without minimum commitments or up-front fees.
- Elastic: With Amazon CloudFront, you don’t need to worry about maintaining expensive web-server capacity to meet the demand from potential traffic spikes for popular content. The service automatically responds as demand increases or decreases without any intervention from you.
- Reliable: Amazon CloudFront is built using Amazon’s highly reliable infrastructure. The distributed nature of edge locations used by Amazon CloudFront automatically routes end users to the closest location as required by network conditions.
- Global: Amazon CloudFront uses a global network of edge locations, located near your end users in the United States, Europe and Asia.
Pricing
Pay only for what you use. There is no minimum fee. Estimate your monthly bill using the AWS Simple Monthly Calculator.
United States Edge Locations
Data Transfer
- $0.170 per GB – first 10 TB / month data transfer out
- $0.120 per GB – next 40 TB / month data transfer out
- $0.100 per GB – next 100 TB / month data transfer out
- $0.090 per GB – data transfer out / month over 150 TB
Requests
$0.010 per 10,000 GET requests
European Edge Locations
Data Transfer
- $0.170 per GB – first 10 TB / month data transfer out
- $0.120 per GB – next 40 TB / month data transfer out
- $0.100 per GB – next 100 TB / month data transfer out
- $0.090 per GB – data transfer out / month over 150 TB
Requests
$0.012 per 10,000 GET requests
Hong Kong Edge Locations
Data Transfer
- $0.210 per GB – first 10 TB / month data transfer out
- $0.160 per GB – next 40 TB / month data transfer out
- $0.140 per GB – next 100 TB / month data transfer out
- $0.130 per GB – data transfer out / month over 150 TB
Requests
$0.012 per 10,000 GET requests
Japan Edge Locations
Data Transfer
- $0.220 per GB – first 10 TB / month data transfer out
- $0.168 per GB – next 40 TB / month data transfer out
- $0.147 per GB – next 100 TB / month data transfer out
- $0.137 per GB – data transfer out / month over 150 TB
Requests
$0.013 per 10,000 GET requests
Source: Amazon CloudFront Beta
