Use AWS Auto Scaling to automatically adjust the capacity of your origin resources, such as EC2 instances or ECS services, based on real-time traffic demands. This ensures that your origin can handle fluctuating traffic loads without over-provisioning or under-provisioning, optimizing both performance and cost.

For applications with a global user base, combine CloudFront with AWS Global Accelerator to route traffic to the optimal AWS region and accelerate content delivery. Global Accelerator provides static IP addresses and automatically reroutes traffic away from unhealthy endpoints, ensuring high availability and low latency.

Use CloudFront’s managed cache policies like UseOriginCacheControlHeaders to fine-tune content delivery. Set longer TTLs for static content and shorter TTLs for dynamic content, using cache invalidation to maintain freshness.

Use CloudFront Functions or Lambda@Edge (Node.js 22, Python 3.13) to run custom code at the edge for tasks like A/B testing or security checks, offloading origin processing to enhance scalability and reduce latency.

Enable CloudFront Regional Edge Caches to cache content at regional locations closer to your users. This additional caching layer reduces the load on your origin and edge locations, improves cache hit ratios, and enhances content delivery performance.

Use Origin Shield to consolidate requests and improve cache hit ratios, especially for highly dynamic or personalized content. This feature can significantly reduce the load on your origin servers and improve the scalability of your application by serving more requests from the cache.

For critical applications with high availability requirements, consider a multi-CDN strategy. This involves using multiple content delivery networks (CDNs) to deliver content, allowing you to switch between CDNs in case of outages or performance issues. This strategy enhances scalability and resilience.

Monitor CloudFront metrics like cache hit ratio, request count, error rates, and data transfer using CloudWatch. Use the new security dashboard and custom dashboards to visualize and alert on performance anomalies.

Use CloudFront real-time metrics and logs to gain immediate insights into content delivery performance. Analyze real-time data to detect issues like traffic spikes, increased error rates, or latency changes, and respond promptly to maintain optimal performance.

Integrate AWS X-Ray with your application to trace requests across distributed systems, including CloudFront, origin servers, and backend services. X-Ray helps identify bottlenecks, performance issues, and latency sources, providing a detailed view of the user experience.

Integrate third-party Application Performance Monitoring (APM) tools like New Relic, Datadog, or Dynatrace for deeper insights into your application's performance. These tools offer advanced analytics, end-to-end tracing, and detailed performance metrics, helping you optimize the user experience.

Regularly monitor the health and expiration dates of SSL/TLS certificates used with CloudFront. Use CloudWatch Events and Lambda functions to automate notifications and renewals, ensuring secure and uninterrupted HTTPS delivery.

Use CloudFront standard logging (v2) with tools like Amazon Athena to analyze viewer and request data. Leverage new fields like c-country to uncover user behavior trends and optimize caching and delivery strategies.

Regularly perform performance testing and benchmarking of your CloudFront distributions. Use tools like Apache JMeter, Gatling, or AWS Performance Insights to simulate different traffic scenarios and measure the impact on performance. Use the results to fine-tune configurations and improve efficiency.

Regularly review and adjust the size and type of your origin infrastructure, such as EC2 instances, based on actual usage patterns. Use AWS Compute Optimizer and CloudWatch metrics to identify over-provisioned or underutilized resources, ensuring cost-effective and efficient infrastructure.

Enable Gzip or Brotli compression in CloudFront to reduce the size of text-based assets like HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. This reduces bandwidth usage and improves load times, especially for users with slower internet connections.

Use image optimization techniques, such as resizing, format conversion, and compression, to reduce the size of image files served through CloudFront. Consider using AWS services like AWS Lambda for dynamic image processing or AWS Elemental MediaConvert for video optimization.

Configure Origin Access Control (OAC) for S3, MediaPackage V2, or Lambda URLs to restrict direct access, ensuring CloudFront is the sole content source for enhanced security and optimized delivery.

Use serverless services like AWS Lambda or AWS Fargate for backend processing and API services. These services can automatically scale based on demand, providing a cost-effective way to handle variable workloads while ensuring high performance and low latency.

Use AWS Global Accelerator or VPC endpoints to optimize network paths and reduce latency. Global Accelerator improves availability and performance by routing traffic through the optimal AWS edge locations, while VPC endpoints provide secure and efficient connectivity to AWS services.

Design cache key policies to include only necessary request components, such as query strings, headers, or cookies, in the cache key. This reduces the number of unique cache entries, improves cache hit ratios, and optimizes the use of CloudFront caching capabilities.