10 Questions To Ensure Your Cdn Supports Your Continuous Delivery Needs

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10 QUESTIONS TO Ensure YOUR CDN SUPPORTS YOUR
CONTINUOUS DELIVERY NEEDS
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• Etsy deploys more than 30 releases of its website
  every day. The average time between Amazons
  deployments is 11.6 seconds. In todays world,
  DevOps teams, security teams, and IT systems are
  challenged to keep up. The strain on these teams
  and systems is in part due to the reality that
  legacy content delivery networks (CDNs) simply
  cant meet continuous delivery needs. Ten years
  ago, CDNs could easily handle monthly or
  quarterly website deployments. After all,
  developers only needed a system that could cache
  static content on edge servers closer to
  end-users.
• Application development and delivery needs have
  changed. Today, continuous deployments are
  necessary for businesses to keep up with
  consumers. Media companies need to report
  breaking news as it develops readers dont want
  to hear about the results of the presidential
  primaries a day after polls close. They expect
  results as they happen. In the e-commerce
  industry, businesses need to be agile when it
  comes to updating prices and inventory during
  flash sales allowing customers to purchase
  shoes that are actually out of stock is a bad
  user experience. Continuous delivery is mission
  critical for companies as consumers demand
  real-time updates. So, what role does a CDN play
  in continuous delivery?
• In CDNs Role In Continuous Delivery And DevOps,
  Forrester analyst Mark Grannan writes about how
  CDNs help DevOps, network operations, and
  security teams address the demands and threats of
  todays landscape. He notes three distinct roles
  CDNs have in continuous delivery
• CDNs ensure optimal caching strategies
• Making changes to production environments can
  sometimes have unexpected effects on caching
  strategies. In order to mitigate the worst case
  scenario in which changes cause a page to break,
  DevOps teams can use CDNs to test their caching
  strategies in pre-production environments.
  Automation from CDNs enable organizations to be
  agile and responsive when it comes to updating
  content, recalling content, and deploying new
  releases. This increase in agility and
  responsiveness encourages organizations to try
  new things. For example, with a modern CDN, an
  online media company can quickly push The 5
  Reasons Why You Shouldnt Get A Puppy to their
  website. If an hour later, analytics reports show
  more than 75 of readers abandon the site after
  viewing this article for 5 seconds or less, the
  article must be pulled. The teams CDN enables
  them to immediately recall this content.

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2. CDNs provide visibility into application
performance and security CDNs gather an enormous
amount of data on performance and security
events. With so much data, its oftentimes
difficult for organizations to separate whats
relevant from what isnt. Modern CDNs provide
powerful analytic tools that organizations can
use to troubleshoot performance and security
issues in a timely manner. For example,
organizations can use data from their CDN to
discover that a particular image isnt loading
correctly, causing a slow page load. This insight
empowers DevOps teams to quickly replace the
faulty image with a new one that doesnt degrade
performance. Modern CDNs leverage APIs to push
large amounts of data in near real-time, enabling
DevOps teams to react quickly to issues that
arise. 3. CDNs mitigate security threats Not
only can CDNs provide insight into security
threats as they develop, they can also actively
protect against these attacks. CDNs are located
at an optimal position to do this at the edge
of the network, between an organizations origin
servers and the end user. This allows a CDN to
prevent malicious traffic from ever reaching the
origin servers. This is especially useful during
distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks. A
CDN that is best equipped to protect against
these attacks is one that can quickly push new
rules across the network in order to stop
evolving threats.
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• If you are currently using a CDN or looking to
  deploy one, here are 10 questions to ask to
  ensure your CDN has the features needed to
  support your continuous delivery needs.
• How long does it take for an invalidation request
  to propagate through the CDN?
• Does the CDN provide analytics and
  troubleshooting down to the URL level?
• How long does it take for a configuration change
  to be rolled out for my application?
• What tasks can be completed via APIs?
• What is the process to change a configuration?
• How long does it take to purge the cache?
• How can the CDN mitigate security attacks?
• How does the CDN automatically optimize for
  faster performance?
• Does the CDN empower my marketing team to quickly
  deploy new campaigns and content?
• Does the CDN enable the development of rich,
  immersive experiences without compromising
  performance?
• CDNs provide DevOps teams with numerous benefits
  when it comes to continuous delivery. Automation
  allows organizations to be more agile, giving
  them the ability to respond to consumer demands
  and constantly evolving security threats. If your
  agile team continuously deploys, ask the right
  questions to ensure your CDN meets your needs.

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secure, and easy.
Instart Logic provides the first cloud
application delivery service in the world to
extend beyond the limited backend-only cloud
architectures of the past with an innovative,
intelligent end-to-end platform delivered as a
service.Our end-to-end platform combines
machine learning for performance and security
with a CDN for delivery. Designed for DevOps and
mobile-first applications.
Interested in learning more? Try it on your
site by creating an account for our free Starter
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