Akamai Setup

Last update: Fri Apr 19 2024 00:00:00 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time)

Topics:
Edge Delivery Services

The following screenshots illustrate how to use the Akamai Property Manager to configure a property to deliver content. Essential settings are marked with a red circle.

Essential Property settings

Origin Server

Configuration properties:

Name

Value

Comment

Origin Server Hostname

main--<repo>--<organization>.hlx.live

Replace repo and organization with the values for your site.

Forward Host Header

Origin Hostname

Cache Key Hostname

Incoming Host Header

Add Behavior: Remove Vary Header

Configuration properties:

Name

Value

Comment

Remove Vary Header

On

Add Behavior: Modify Outgoing Request Header

Configuration properties:

Name

Value

Comment

Action

Modify

Custom Header Name

X-Forwarded-Host

New Header Value

{{builtin.AK_HOST}}

Avoid Duplicate Headers

Yes

Add more outgoing request headers:

Configuration properties:

Name

Value

Comment

Action

Modify

Custom Header Name

X-BYO-CDN-Type

New Header Value

akamai

Avoid Duplicate Headers

Yes

Configuration properties:

Name

Value

Comment

Action

Modify

Custom Header Name

X-Push-Invalidation

New Header Value

enabled

Avoid Duplicate Headers

Yes

Add/Modify Behavior: Caching

Configuration properties:

Name

Value

Comment

Caching Option

Honor origin Cache-Control

Enhanced RFC support

No

Honor private

No

Honor must-revalidate

No

Add Behavior: HTTP/2

(Optional, but recommended)

Add Rule: Modify Outgoing Response Header

Create a new rule

Set the criteria for the rule to be applied

Set the behavior if a match is found

These are all essential property settings for delivering content.

Caveats

Do not enable Akamai mPulse Real Usage Monitoring. While the performance impact on most sites is negligible, for sites built for consistent high performance, enabling it will prevent reaching a Lighthouse Score of 100. In AEM, you have a Real User Monitoring service built-in, so that dual instrumentation will be unnecessary and is strongly discouraged.

Also, do not enable Akamai Bot Manager or similar Web Application Firewall offerings, as they markedly interfere with rendering performance and user experience. Your site on AEM is protected against bot attacks on the backend, so that this performance cost comes with negligible benefit.

Setup push invalidation

Push invalidation automatically purges content on the customer’s production CDN (e.g. www.yourdomain.com), whenever an author publishes content changes.

Content is purged by url and by cache tag/key.

Push invalidation is enabled by adding specific properties to the project’s configuration (an Excel workbook named .helix/config.xlsx in Sharepoint or a Google Sheet named .helix/config in Google Drive).

Configuration properties:

key

value

comment

cdn.prod.host

<Production Host>

Host name of production site, e.g. www.yourdomain.com

cdn.prod.type

akamai

cdn.prod.endpoint

<host>

Fast Purge API credentials

cdn.prod.clientSecret

<client_secret>

Fast Purge API credentials

cdn.prod.clientToken

<client_token>

Fast Purge API credentials

cdn.prod.accessToken

<access_token>

Fast Purge API credentials

AEM push invalidation uses the Akamai Fast Purge API, specifically Delete by URL and Delete by cache tag.

The Fast Purge API credentials consist of

host = akaa-XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX.luna.akamaiapis.net
client_token = akab-XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX-XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
client_secret = XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
access_token = akab-XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX-XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

They can be generated by following the instructions at Create an API client with custom permissions.