Amazon CloudFront · Finder + automated fixer
CloudFront Turn on Compression
Turn onCompression
Enable CloudFront compression to reduce CDN data transfer costs by up to 65%. CloudFix identifies distributions and enables compression automatically.
What happens, in order.
Finder · read-only
Finds the opportunity
Scans your connected accounts with a read-only role. It can see resource metadata and usage; it can’t change anything.
You
Approve in Recommendations
It appears in your Recommendations view with what it would save. Approve the resources you choose. Nothing has changed yet.
Fixer
Runs in your account
The fixer runs as an AWS Systems Manager Automation runbook in your AWS account, and acts only on the resources you approved.
Record
Logs the execution
The Systems Manager execution is logged, so every change can be audited.
Finder role
Read-only. It can see resource metadata and usage. It can’t change anything.
Fixer role
A separate, minimal role that acts only on the resources you approved, through AWS Systems Manager.
Saves by
CloudFront can automatically compress text-based content, resulting in reduced data transfer costs and faster response times. This opportunity identifies distributions serving suitable content with compression turned off and enables compression, which is supported by all modern browsers.
CloudFront can automatically compress text-based content between 1KB and 10MB in size, resulting in reduced data transfer costs and improved response times. With CloudFix, you can enable this optimization across your CloudFront distributions with just a few clicks, saving up to 65% or more on CloudFront data transfer costs.
What is the Problem?
Amazon CloudFront is a content delivery network (CDN) that charges based on “data egress” – the amount of data transferred from CloudFront to clients. Since 2015, CloudFront has supported automatic compression of text-based content, which can significantly reduce data transfer sizes and costs, but this feature is not enabled by default. Many organizations miss out on this straightforward optimization opportunity, unnecessarily paying higher CloudFront bills than needed.
Common issues include:
- CloudFront distributions with compression disabled, leading to higher data transfer costs
- Distributions that have no caching policies configured or incompatible cache policies
- Uncertainty about which distributions are suitable for compression
How CloudFix Helps
CloudFix automatically identifies CloudFront distributions where compression can be safely enabled and configures them with the optimal settings. The fixer applies compression only where appropriate, ensuring there are no negative impacts on your application’s functionality.
Our solution:
- Analyzes your CloudFront distributions to find compression opportunities
- Automatically configures both GZIP and Brotli compression
- Applies changes without service disruption
AWS Services Affected
Benefits
Enabling CloudFront compression offers several important benefits:
- Cost Reduction: Reduce data transfer costs by up to 65% or more
- Improved Performance: Faster page loads and content delivery
- Better User Experience: Reduced latency for website visitors
- Zero Downtime: Implementation without service disruption
- Transparent Implementation: No changes to your application code required
How It Works
The finder works read-only from your cost and usage data and your CloudFront configuration to identify distributions where compression is turned off and can be safely enabled. Each opportunity appears in your CloudFix Recommendations, and nothing changes until you approve it.
Once approved, the fixer runs as an AWS Systems Manager Automation runbook in your own account. It enables GZIP and Brotli compression on the eligible cache behaviors, moving them to a compression-compatible cache policy where needed, and every execution is logged.
Frequently Asked Questions
Q: Will enabling compression affect all content types?
A: No. CloudFront only compresses file types with Content-Type headers that are compressible, such as HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and other text-based formats. Already compressed formats like JPEG, PNG, or video files will not be compressed further.
Q: Does enabling compression require downtime?
A: No. The compression changes are applied without any service disruption.
Q: Can I rollback the changes if needed?
A: Yes. The configuration can be manually reverted by disabling compression and associated cache policy compression settings for the affected cache behaviors.
Q: How significant are the savings?
A: According to AWS, the overall payload reduction for a typical web page can approach 80%. For text-based files like JavaScript, compression ratios around 77% are common, meaning you pay for only 23% of the original data transfer.
Q: Are there any potential downsides to enabling compression?
A: For most use cases, there are no downsides. The minimal CPU overhead for decompression on client devices is negligible compared to the bandwidth savings and performance improvements.
Related Resources
- AWS Documentation: Serving Compressed Files
- AWS Blog: New – Gzip Compression Support for Amazon CloudFront
- Amazon CloudFront Developer Guide
Ready to start saving on AWS? See how much you could cut from your cloud bill with a free cost optimization assessment, or explore CloudFix automated Finder/Fixers that eliminate waste across 30+ AWS services.
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