Choosing the right CDN for Adobe Experience Manager (AEM) as a Cloud Service

In today's digital landscape, ensuring fast and reliable content delivery is crucial for maintaining a seamless user experience. Content Delivery Networks (CDNs) play a vital role in this process by distributing content across various servers worldwide, reducing latency, and improving load times. When it comes to Adobe Experience Manager (AEM) as a Cloud Service, selecting the right CDN can significantly impact performance, security, flexibility, and cost.

In this blog post, we'll explore the pros and cons of using Adobe's integrated CDN versus bringing your own CDN (BYO CDN) from leading providers like Cloudflare, Akamai, and Cloudfront. We'll delve into common use cases, such as handling legacy CDN setups, edge computing needs, complex traffic management, and custom security requirements. By the end, you'll have a clearer understanding of which CDN solution best aligns with your business needs and how to leverage it for optimal performance, security, and cost-efficiency.

Adobe CDN

Pros:

1. Integrated with AEM: Adobe's CDN comes fully optimized for AEM performance, ensuring smooth content delivery.
2. Self-Service Management: Allows for self-service CDN management, including configuring rules in a YAML file—redirects, caching, WAF rules, error pages, domains, SSL certificates. This cdn.yaml file can be deployed to each environment using the config pipeline at Cloud Manager.
3. Maintenance and Security: Fully maintained by Adobe, including security patches and compliance needs.
4. Support: Easier to get support from Adobe SMEs for troubleshooting since they belong to the same product suite.

Cons:

1. File Size Limitation:The cumulative size of the configuration file, including traffic filter rules, cannot exceed 100KB.
2. Advanced Security Licenses: Advanced traffic filter rules (WAF rules) require either an Enhanced Security license or WAF-DDoS Protection license.
3. Cost Considerations: CDN costs need to be evaluated—while it comes as part of AEM as a Cloud Service, it might cost more for other products like Edge Delivery Services (EDS).
4. Certificate Limit: Cloud Manager supports up to 50 installed certificates, meaning a maximum of 50 domains can be configured at a time.
5. IP Allow Lists: Limit of 50 IP/CIDR addresses for each allow list, with a maximum of 50 IP Allow Lists for one program.
6. Universal Editor Compatibility: The Universal Editor is not compatible with IP Allow Lists; IP Allow Lists must not be enabled to use Universal Editor.

BYO CDN

Any CDN provider can be picked from several leading CDN vendors like – Cloudflare, Akamai, Cloudfront as per the business needs.

Pros:

1. Customization: CDN can be chosen to align perfectly with actual business and performance needs.
2. Additional Capabilities: Third-party CDNs might include additional capabilities like WAF, edge computing, etc.
3. Flexibility: Provides better flexibility with configuration, maintenance, and multiple CDN strategies.

Cons:

1. Management Responsibility: Needs to be managed by the customer, including updates, security patches, and compliance.
2. Expertise Required: Requires an engineering CDN expert for configuration with AEM and troubleshooting issues, adding to integration complexity.
3. Troubleshooting: Troubleshooting between Adobe and the CDN provider might delay resolution due to the need to debug different products.

Choosing BYO CDN over Adobe CDN

Handling Legacy CDN Setups:

If you have existing legacy integrations with a specific CDN provider that are difficult to replace, continuing with that provider might be necessary.

A few things to consider in this case:

• The legacy CDN will be managed and configured by the customer.
• The legacy CDN should point to Adobe CDN’s ingress as its origin domain.
• An engineering CDN expert must be on call for related issues.
• Before going live, validate with Adobe’s customer support that end-to-end traffic routing is functioning correctly.
• The addition of a customer CDN into AEM as a Cloud Service architecture might introduce negligible latency.
• Customer CDN configuration is supported for the publish tier, but not in front of the author tier.

Edge Computing Needs:

If your project demands extensive customization of request and response transformations or specific client-side redirects, a more flexible CDN solution might be needed. A common use case in this scenario is using edge workers to enable serverless computing at the edge of a CDN, allowing developers to run custom code closer to users for faster response times, reduced latency, and improved scalability.

Currently, there is no support for edge workers or edge computing with Adobe CDN. Some CDN providers offering edge computing capabilities include Akamai, Cloudflare, Cloudfront, and Microsoft Azure CDN.

Complex Traffic Management:

If your application requires highly complex traffic management rules, such as advanced load balancing or geo-targeting, a third-party CDN might be more suitable.

Custom/Complex Security Requirements:

For organizations with specific security requirements, such as strong encryption, robust access controls, custom WAF rules, or bot management, it is better to opt for a CDN providing these specific features.

Several CDN providers offer WAF support out of the box, including Akamai, Cloudflare, and Cloudfront. They provide cloud-based protection, routing traffic through a global network of servers for near real-time threat detection and mitigation.

Conclusion

Adobe provided CDN is a good option if you want an integrated CDN with full compatibility, minimal customization, and Adobe-managed security. Bringing your own CDN is a better option if you need total control over the CDN, better cost management, specific performance, and security features.

Whether you're considering Adobe's integrated CDN or exploring third-party options, our team of experts is here to help you make the best choice for your business needs.

We love being part of the Adobe developer community and are always eager to share our solutions and insights. If you found this article helpful, let us know! And if you're looking for a dedicated team of architects and developers to elevate your AEM projects, get in touch with us today.

References

• [AEM Gems] Getting started with Adobe Managed CDN
• What is Adobe Experience Manager Sites Cloud Service ("AEM Sites")?
• CDN in AEM as a Cloud Service
  • Traffic Filter Rules Including WAF Rules
  • Configuring Traffic at the CDN