sydepsystem design atlas

Static Hosting + CDN

Serve pre-built assets from edge caches instead of a live origin.

StarterWeb
Build PipelineDevOps & DeliveryStatic AssetsStorageCDNNetworkingBrowserClient

Static assets (HTML, JS, images) are built once and pushed to object storage, then served to users through a CDN's edge caches -- so most requests never reach an origin server at all.

When to use it

  • Content doesn't need to be rendered per-request (marketing sites, SPA bundles, docs)
  • Global users need low-latency delivery without running origin infrastructure everywhere

Trade-offs

  • Cache invalidation on deploy needs care or users see stale assets
  • Not suitable for genuinely dynamic, per-user server-rendered content

Components used

CI/CD PipelineObject StorageCDNSingle-Page App

How it works

  • The site is built ahead of time into static files and uploaded to object storage.
  • A CDN caches those files at edge locations worldwide, so requests are served near the user without reaching the origin.
  • There is no server to scale, patch or exploit on the read path.

Used in the wild

  • Marketing sites, documentation and blogs.
  • Single-page application bundles, with dynamic data fetched separately from an API.
  • Traffic spikes from launches or campaigns, which the edge absorbs without any origin scaling.

Good to know

  • Cache invalidation is the operational catch. Content-hashed filenames plus a short-TTL HTML entry point is the standard approach, letting assets be cached effectively forever.
  • It is the cheapest and most reliable way to serve a website, which is why the pattern keeps being rediscovered under new names — from plain static files to JAMstack.