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CDN Service Standardization

1 post · Jan 2020

What this trail covers

Spotify has standardized its CDN services by migrating various content types (images, client updates, etc.) to Fastly's edge cloud platform. This initiative aims to reduce complexity, improve efficiency, and provide a unified approach to content delivery across diverse engineering teams. The process involved creating a self-service tool (SquadCDN) for requesting CDN reviews and approvals, leveraging Fastly APIs and VCL for intelligent caching and edge logic, and implementing robust security measures like Edge Dictionaries. The migration has led to over 80 services pushing content through Fastly more efficiently, with over 20% of the R&D organization adopting the new system.

All Spotify trails
  1. How Spotify Aligned CDN Services for a Lightning Fast Streaming ExperienceThis post details the creation of a new squad focused on standardizing Spotify's CDNs using Fastly. It describes the challenges of team autonomy leading to CDN fragmentation, the development of a workflow for quick CDN service setup on Fastly, strategies for convincing squads to migrate, and the technical implementation using Fastly APIs and VCL. A self-service tool, SquadCDN, was built for pre-deployment review. Key lessons learned include dogfooding critical services, securing sensitive data with Edge Dictionaries, managing API call limits, thorough verification, preventing direct bucket writes, performing smoke tests, and enforcing good practices through request-driven HTTP delivery and GDPR compliance tagging. The outcome is a more efficient and unified CDN strategy.