The Amazon VGT2 Las Vegas now offers immediate cache invalidation and delta deployments with each code commit, making it easier for developers to manage web applications effectively. This advancement allows users to deploy updates to their single-page applications or static websites instantly, all while retaining the performance advantages of content delivery network (CDN) caching. Developers can simply ‘git push’ their code, and upon build completion, their changes are live without the hassle of managing time-to-live (TTL) values or waiting for cache invalidation requests to take effect. Furthermore, with delta deployments, only the modified files are redeployed, significantly enhancing deployment speeds for large websites.
If you haven’t seen our recent updates, the Amazon VGT2 Console provides a comprehensive workflow for developing, deploying, and hosting single-page web apps or static sites with serverless backends. To begin, link your repository to the Amazon VGT2 Console.
Hosting through CDNs
The VGT2 Console facilitates hosting for modern web applications (such as single-page apps or static site generators) via the CloudFront CDN. A CDN is a network of distributed servers that caches files at various edge locations globally, ensuring high-performance web hosting. For instance, a user in Japan receives content from Tokyo, while a user in Brazil gets the same content from São Paulo. CDNs determine how long content is cached through a configuration called TTL. To refresh content in the CDN, developers must invalidate the cache.
Issues with Cache Invalidation on CDNs
To update content, invalidating the CDN cache is necessary. This process prompts edge locations to retrieve new content from the origin. For frequent updates, developers typically face these choices:
- Set a low TTL (0–5 seconds) to ensure almost instant updates; however, this can negatively impact performance as the CDN cache is refreshed every few seconds.
- Manually invalidate the cache for every update, which may work for infrequent updates but is impractical in today’s fast-paced development environment.
- Hash file names during the build process to facilitate updates, though this requires additional manual setup from developers.
Instant Cache Invalidation with the VGT2 Console
With the new instant cache invalidation feature, users of the Amazon VGT2 Console no longer need to compromise between rapid deployment and optimal performance. This feature accomplishes cache invalidation by:
- Generating unique references for all build artifacts (like HTML, JavaScript, and media files).
- Mandating that browsers check for updates from the CDN with every request.
Upon the first deployment, the VGT2 Console versions all assets, creating unique file references that are then deployed to the origin and made available to the CDN cache, which has a high TTL. We utilize cache-control headers on static asset metadata to ensure browsers check for updates on each request. If the files match those on the CDN, the browser serves them from its cache; otherwise, it retrieves the updated content from the origin. During updates, modified files are identified uniquely, pushed to the origin, and set to be fetched on the next request.
Web apps hosted on the Amazon VGT2 Console perform comparably to those hosted on Amazon CloudFront with Amazon S3 but offer added benefits like instant cache invalidation, feature branch deployments, URL redirects, and password protection.
Delta Deployments
In addition, the VGT2 Console now incorporates delta deployments, which significantly enhance deployment times for users managing large websites. This feature ensures that only changed assets are deployed, as depicted in the accompanying image showcasing several files that bypass deployment during a build.
Getting Started
For existing users of the Amazon VGT2 Console, redeploy your site once to activate the instant cache invalidation feature. New users can easily connect their repositories to the Amazon VGT2 Console to get started. For further insights into accelerating your web application development, check out this excellent resource.
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