Since October I have immersed myself in understanding what Clouds and Content Distribution Networks (CDNs) can do for Web Application developers. Many of the people I know have deployed or are looking to applications on a Cloud infrastructure this year. Just yesterday, I was talking to a company that I know and they are moving from a hosted ruby service to Azamon looking to make scaling out their service simpler.
The area that is of the biggest interest to me personally is, “how does using a Cloud affect Website optimization?” (That’s the focus of rockstarapps.com tools.) Starting out I was assumed that using Cloud infrastructure or a CDN was only for sites like ESPN.com or CNN.com. How could I, one person and no budget be able to leverage these technologies? Taking this question and breaking it down into several more manageable questions, I try to provide you with the information needed to get started using it in your own projects.
- Isn’t using a CDN going to be expensive?
- How easy will it be to get up to speed and use the technology effectively?
- How can using a CDN like CloudFront improve a sites performance?