I am considering trying out Amazons CloudFront CDN, which utilizes their S3 service for file storage and springs data to servers closest to the browser, however, we have a dedicated server in South Africa, Johannesburg to be exact, so my question is this:
Amazons CloudFront seems to give you the option to have your base server in EU, America, Japan but nowhere near South Africa – I guess EU is the closest? So, will I still benefit from using the CDN to server static files (css, images, javascript – when not using Googles ajax API – and media files) rather than calling them from the same, dedicated server? Bear in mind that although we have a dedicated server, it is STILL a shared hosting environment as we host multiple clients websites on the server.
Secondly, if I DO use a CDN like Amazons CloudFront, can I benefit from caching my content and using far future expires headers, compression etc?
Many thanks
Well, the CDN would take load off your main dedicated server. This is quite advantageous, because it means that you can downgrade your server to something a little cheaper.
It also provides many, many more levels of redundancy than small-medium business could ever hope to achieve (especially with only a single server).
The fact that a CDN has mirrors all over the world is only 1 feature of such a network. It’s a good one, but it is by no means the only one.
Really, you have to think about what you are hoping to achieve by using the CDN, and what you are using it for.
If your application relies on the response time and nothing else matters, then it might be worth keeping your dedicated server running everything because of the proximity to your location. That said, quite often applications that require quick response time only require it for a very small subsection of the overall functionality of the server, so you could unload only the non-time-critical elements to the CDN and still get the best of both worlds.
In short, CDNs have many functions. They save businesses time, money and provide infrastraucture that is otherwise unattainable to the large majority of developers and administrators.