Overview

An origin server is a physical location that houses your deliverable content. For example, if you’re using Akamai Cloud to host your site or application, content may live on a Linode instance or attached Block storage volume, in an Object storage bucket, or on a Kubernetes cluster made up of multiple compute instances.

Origins live at the workspace-level in Delivery Manager. When you add an origin to your workspace, it’s available to all environments within that workspace.

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Beta limitations

Standalone origin management on the contract level will be supported at a later stage.

The edge server and origin server relationship

Akamai’s edge servers need to source and cache content from somewhere, and that content lives on an origin server. By caching content closer to end-users, it can be delivered to them faster.

Akamai works by distinguishing between the origin server hosting the original, authoritative version of your deliverable content, and a network of Akamai edge servers that store cached versions of that content. After it’s accessed by Delivery Manager, your content is held in a cache for an amount of time that you determine with your configuration.

Origin types

The type of content you’re delivering, like a website, app, streaming media, or downloadable content, determines the type of origin you can use. This also determines the Akamai product you select when setting up your workspace.

• NetStorage. Akamai’s secure, cloud-based storage service. NetStorage integrates directly with multiple Akamai delivery products, as well as the Delivery Manager interface.
• Custom origin. An actual server, like a virtual machine or object storage bucket, you maintain to house your deliverable content.
• Third-party origin. A server from a third-party cloud storage provider, like Amazon Web Services, where your deliverable content is maintained.