CloudFront and AWS Global Accelerator

Question 1

What is CloudFront?

Answer 1

Content delivery system that caches content at the edge for low latency, globally

Question 2

Can CloudFront be used to ingress data?

Answer 2

Yes, it can be used to ingress data into S3 with transfer acceleration

Question 3

What are 2 difference between CloudFront and S3 cross region replication?

Answer 3

• CloudFront is easier to set up globally - CRR has to be set up for each region you want replication to occur in
• CF caches files for a specific TTL, whereas CRR is almost real-time updates

Question 4

How can CloudFront connect to private EC2 instances?

Answer 4

It must pass through an ALB - it does not have direct access to the private instances

Question 5

How does geo-restriction work in CloudFront?

Answer 5

You create an allowlist and a blocklist, then users’ IPs are cross referenced to find out what country they are in and thus what content they are allowed to access

Question 6

How do price classes work?

Answer 6

Price classes are separated by what regions and how many regions you want to supply to, e.g. Price class 100 is essentially just Europe and North America

Question 7

What is a cache invalidation in CloudFront?

Answer 7

A command you’ve issued to manually force a refresh of a path or everything in a cache

Question 8

Why use a cache invalidation in CloudFront?

Answer 8

If you want to manually refresh the cache because you’ve recently updated cached content and it should/needs to be updated

Question 9

What is AnyCast IP?

Answer 9

All servers hold the same IP address and the client is routed to the nearest one, e.g. send this letter to “the nearest ice cream shop” - you don’t know where it is but you want it to be sent to the nearest one

Question 10

What is unicast IP?

Answer 10

One server holds one IP address. Distinctly different/opposite from anycast IP

Question 11

What is Global Accelerator?

Answer 11

Getting a customer to connect to their nearest edge location and then traversing the AWS network as opposed to the internet

Question 12

What type of IPs are relevant to Global Accelerator?

Answer 12

AnyCast IPs - the edge locations have static AnyCast IPs so when the customer asks to connect they are simply routed to the closest one

Question 13

What are 2 differences between Global Accelerator and CloudFront?

Answer 13

• GA content is served from a central location, just faster than if it was over the internet, whereas CF content is served at the edge.
• GA is a better fit for applications whereas CF is for static content