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ANS-C01: Using CloudFront CDN to Reduce Latency and Encrypt AWS ALB Traffic

Learn how adding CloudFront as a content delivery network can improve latency and force SSL encryption for your AWS Application Load Balancer infrastructure.

Table of Contents

Question

A company has developed a new web application on AWS. The application runs on Amazon Elastic Container Service (Amazon ECS) on AWS Fargate behind an Application Load Balancer (ALB) in the us-east-1 Region. The application uses Amazon Route 53 to host the DNS records for the domain. The content that is served from the website is mostly static images and files that are not updated frequently. Most of the traffic to the website from end users will originate from the United States. Some traffic will originate from Canada and Europe.

A network engineer needs to design a solution that will reduce latency for end users at the lowest cost. The solution also must ensure that all traffic is encrypted in transit until the traffic reaches the ALB.

Which solution will meet these requirements?

A. Configure the ALB to use an AWS Global Accelerator accelerator in us-east-1. Create a secure HTTPS listener. Create an alias record in Amazon Route 53 for the custom domain name. Configure the alias record to route to the DNS name that is assigned to the accelerator for the ALB.
B. Configure the ALB to use a secure HTTPS listener. Create an Amazon CloudFront distribution. Set the origin domain name to point to the DNS record that is assigned to the ALConfigure the CloudFront distribution to use an SSL certificate. Set all behaviors to force HTTPS. Create an alias record in Amazon Route 53 for the custom domain name. Configure the alias record to route to the DNS name that is assigned to the ALB.
C. Configure the ALB to use a secure HTTPS listener. Create an Amazon CloudFront distribution. Set the origin domain name to point to the DNS record that is assigned to the ALB. Configure the CloudFront distribution to use an SSL certificate and redirect HTTP to HTTPS. Create an alias record in Amazon Route 53 for the custom domain name. Configure the alias record to route to the CloudFront distribution.
D. Configure the ALB to use an AWS Global Accelerator accelerator in us-east-1. Create a secure HTTPS listener. Create a second application stack on Amazon ECS on Fargate in the eu-west-1 Region. Create another secure HTTPS listener. Create an alias record in Amazon Route 53 for the custom domain name. Configure the alias record to use a latency-based routing policy to route to the DNS name that is assigned to the accelerator for the ALBs.

Answer

C. Configure the ALB to use a secure HTTPS listener. Create an Amazon CloudFront distribution. Set the origin domain name to point to the DNS record that is assigned to the ALB. Configure the CloudFront distribution to use an SSL certificate and redirect HTTP to HTTPS. Create an alias record in Amazon Route 53 for the custom domain name. Configure the alias record to route to the CloudFront distribution.

Explanation

To reduce latency and ensure encryption in transit, CloudFront should be used with the ALB origin. CloudFront can cache static content globally to improve performance. Route 53 aliases to CloudFront using HTTPS redirection and SSL certificates to encrypt connections.

Options A and B do not leverage CloudFront’s global edge caches. Option D adds complexity without necessarily improving latency for users. Option C provides the simplest architecture using CloudFront with ALB to meet the requirements.

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