Content Delivery of AI-Generated Media via CloudFront

Question

Pulumi · Accepted Answer

Content Delivery Networks (CDNs) like Amazon CloudFront play a crucial role in delivering content like AI-generated media to users with low latency and high transfer speeds all around the world. CloudFront works by caching content in edge locations closer to the end-users, and requests for your content are automatically routed to the nearest edge location, so content is delivered with the best possible performance.

In this scenario, we'll create a CloudFront distribution to serve AI-generated media stored within an Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3) bucket. The S3 bucket will act as the origin of our content. CloudFront will deliver the content, and we'll use Pulumi, an Infrastructure as Code tool, to provision these AWS resources.

Here's what you need to do to set up a CloudFront distribution with Pulumi:

1. **Create an S3 Bucket**: Where your AI-generated media will be stored.
2. **Set Up a CloudFront Distribution**: Linked to the S3 bucket, creating a globally-distributed network of proxy servers that cache your content.
3. **Configure an Identity and Policy**: Ensure that CloudFront can securely access the content in the S3 bucket.
4. **Export Output Values**: Like the URL of the CloudFront distribution.

Below is a Pulumi program in Python that creates an S3 bucket, sets up a CloudFront distribution to serve the content of that bucket, and configures the necessary policies for access control.

```python
import pulumi
import pulumi_aws as aws

# Create an AWS S3 bucket to store your AI-generated media.
media_bucket = aws.s3.Bucket("aiMediaBucket",
    acl="private",  # The bucket is private, CloudFront will manage access.
    force_destroy=True,  # Allows deleting bucket even if it has objects in it.
)

# A bucket object for illustrating the setup, replace with your actual media file uploads.
index_object = aws.s3.BucketObject("index.html",
    bucket=media_bucket.id,
    key="index.html",  # Replace with the key to your default AI-generated media file.
    content_type="text/html",  # Update to match the content type of your media.
    source=pulumi.FileAsset("index.html"),  # Replace with the actual path to your media file.
)

# Create an Origin Access Identity (OAI) for the CloudFront distribution. This allows the distribution to fetch objects from the S3 bucket.
oai = aws.cloudfront.OriginAccessIdentity("mediaOai",
    comment="Access identity for media distribution."
)

# Grant the OAI access to the S3 bucket. CloudFront will then use this identity to request the files from the bucket.
bucket_policy = aws.s3.BucketPolicy("bucketPolicy",
    bucket=media_bucket.id,
    policy=media_bucket.arn.apply(lambda arn: json.dumps({
        "Version": "2012-10-17",
        "Statement": [{
            "Effect": "Allow",
            "Principal": {"AWS": f"arn:aws:iam::{aws.get_caller_identity().account_id}:root"},
            "Action": "s3:GetObject",
            "Resource": f"{arn}/*",
        }],
    })),
)

# Create a CloudFront Distribution to serve your AI-generated media.
cdn_distribution = aws.cloudfront.Distribution("cdnDistribution",
    origins=[aws.cloudfront.DistributionOriginArgs(
        domain_name=media_bucket.bucket_regional_domain_name,
        origin_id=media_bucket.id,
        s3_origin_config=aws.cloudfront.DistributionOriginS3OriginConfigArgs(
            origin_access_identity=oai.cloudfront_access_identity_path
        ),
    )],
    enabled=True,  # The distribution is enabled to receive viewer requests.
    is_ipv6_enabled=True,  # Enable IPv6 addresses to be used.
    default_root_object="index.html",  # The object that you want CloudFront to request from your origin. Update as required.
    default_cache_behavior=aws.cloudfront.DistributionDefaultCacheBehaviorArgs(
        allowed_methods=["GET", "HEAD"],  # Allow only read methods for your content.
        cached_methods=["GET", "HEAD"],  # Cache these request methods.
        target_origin_id=media_bucket.id,
        forwarded_values=aws.cloudfront.DistributionDefaultCacheBehaviorForwardedValuesArgs(
            query_string=False,  # Update depending on whether you want to forward query strings.
            cookies=aws.cloudfront.DistributionDefaultCacheBehaviorForwardedValuesCookiesArgs(
                forward="none",  # Specifies whether you want CloudFront to forward cookies to the origin.
            ),
        ),
        viewer_protocol_policy="redirect-to-https",  # Redirect HTTP requests to HTTPS.
        min_ttl=0,
        default_ttl=3600,  # Default time-to-live is 1 hour.
        max_ttl=86400,  # Maximum time-to-live is 1 day.
    ),
    price_class="PriceClass_All",  # Use all locations for the best performance.
    restrictions=aws.cloudfront.DistributionRestrictionsArgs(
        geo_restriction=aws.cloudfront.DistributionRestrictionsGeoRestrictionArgs(
            restriction_type="none",  # Change as required by your use case.
        ),
    ),
    viewer_certificate=aws.cloudfront.DistributionViewerCertificateArgs(
        cloudfront_default_certificate=True,  # Uses the CloudFront default certificate.
    ),
)

# Export the CloudFront distribution URL to be easily accessible.
pulumi.export('cdn_url', cdn_distribution.domain_name)
```

This program first creates an S3 bucket where the AI-generated media content will be stored. Then, it will set up a CloudFront distribution pointing to this S3 bucket as the origin. We also make sure to create an Origin Access Identity, which is an entity that represents a CloudFront distribution and is used to grant the distribution permission to fetch a private object from an Amazon S3 bucket.

You'll need to replace `"index.html"` and `pulumi.FileAsset("index.html")` with paths to your actual AI-generated media files.

After deploying this stack, you will get a CloudFront distribution URL (`cdn_url`) that you can use to access your content globally at low latency. Remember to configure your S3 bucket policy correctly to ensure that only CloudFront can access your media files, providing an added layer of security.