DocumentationExperience Cloud KCS

Purge large sets of cached AEM content when surrogate keys are missing

Last update: October 2, 2026

This article describes the available options for invalidating cached content in the Adobe Experience Manager as a Cloud Service CDN when previously cached objects lack the Surrogate-Key header and purging by path prefix is required.

Description description

Environment

  • Adobe Experience Manager as a Cloud Service
  • Adobe-managed CDN
  • A large set of cached content whose older objects don’t have a Surrogate-Key header

Issue/Symptoms

  • After you update the cache configuration, older cached objects don’t have the new Surrogate-Key header.
  • Purging by the new surrogate key doesn’t invalidate those older objects.
  • You need to invalidate many URLs without clearing unrelated cached content.
  • A full CDN purge is undesirable because it clears all cached resources.

Cause

Objects cached before the Surrogate-Key header was added don’t have that key and therefore can’t be purged as a group using the new key. The Adobe-managed CDN supports single-URL purge, surrogate-key purge, and full purge; it doesn’t support purging by path prefix or wildcard.

Resolution resolution

Follow the steps below to resolve the issue:

  1. Review the supported CDN purge methods:

    • Single-URL purge invalidates one resource.
    • Surrogate-key purge invalidates resources cached with the specified Surrogate-Key header.
    • Full purge invalidates all cached resources.
    • Path-prefix and wildcard purges aren’t supported.

  2. Purge newly cached resources by surrogate key. For resources cached after the configuration change that have the new Surrogate-Key, send one surrogate-key purge request with the appropriate headers. This invalidates all CDN objects with that key.

  3. For older cached objects that don’t have the surrogate key, choose one of the following options:

    • Option A: Send a soft purge for each URL.

      • Generate a list of the affected URLs.
      • Use a script to send an individual soft purge request for each URL.
      • This targets the required content and avoids a full purge.
      • Before purging, ensure the latest content is available on the Dispatcher or Publish tier. Otherwise, the CDN can cache outdated content again.

    • Option B: Perform a one-time full CDN purge.

      • Use this option only if clearing all cached objects is acceptable.
      • A full purge invalidates all cached content, not just the targeted pages.
      • Expect a temporary increase in origin traffic while the cache refills.

    • Option C: Allow the previous cache TTLs to expire.

      • This option requires no manual purge, but users might not see the updated content until the cached objects expire.

  4. After purging or waiting for the TTLs to expire, open the affected URLs and confirm that they display the updated content.

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