There are a few things that must be in place before onboarding your site. This includes setting up your ​Akamai​ contract with the products and services you need, getting your account and base components configured, and acquiring your CP codes for billing. You’ll also need an ​Akamai​ Cloud account so that you can provision and configure your site’s origin servers.

Get your ​Akamai​ contract

Work with your ​Akamai​ account team to determine the products and services you'll need, and get them added to your contract to use ​Akamai​ CDN services. Once your contract is active, your products and services can be configured in the ​Akamai Control Center​.

This tutorial uses ​Akamai​'s Ion solution to configure and deliver your site:

• Ion (via ​Akamai Control Center​). ​Akamai​’s Ion solution helps streamline and secure the delivery of your website or app. Ion comes with several other web-based interfaces you'll use for this process.

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Which Ion version do you have?

You can have one of two versions of Ion on your contract: Ion Premier or Ion Standard. API operations use codename values to differentiate between versions:

• Ion Premier. SPM
• Ion Standard. FRESCA

Make note of the codename for your version of Ion.

1. Initial components

Your account team sets up several base components you'll use to interact with the ​​Akamai​ CDN, including:

1. Your contract's identifier. Your ​​Akamai​​ contract is assigned a unique identifier—its contract ID. You can get this from your account team after they create your contract.
2. A primary group for your contract. Use it to organize your objects—the things you'll create and use to deliver your content. This group is also assigned a unique identifier called a group ID. Make note of this value.
3. An Admin role for your primary group. This role grants permission to all products and services on your contract. Work with your account team to come up with a suitable name for this role.
4. A user for the Admin role. The user is associated with an email address and a password you choose. This tutorial refers to this as your primary admin user. Your primary admin user manages everything on your account, including other users.

See the diagram below for information on how components are structured and set up. The contract, primary group, Admin role, and primary admin user are all set up by your account team. You have the ability to set up, configure, and customize all other components to your liking.

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You can do more with components

You can use your primary admin user to perform all the CDN-related tasks covered in this tutorial. See our Deliver your first site tutorial for examples on other things you can do as the primary admin user in ​Akamai​’s Identity and Access Management tool.

2. CP codes

​Akamai​ uses content provider (CP) codes to track the use of CDN services. Your account team initially provides you with at least one of these codes. In this tutorial, you'll use it when you create an Ion delivery configuration.

A CP code is comprised of two parts:

• An integer value. This is a 5-7 digit value that ​Akamai​ generates.
• A unique alphanumeric name. You pick this value.

3. Authentication credentials

You need to set up authentication credentials before you can start using any ​Akamai​ API. Set up an API client for the primary admin user with these credentials for all of the APIs you’ll be using.

1. Access ​Control Center​, and log in using your primary admin account.

2. Select ☰ > ACCOUNT ADMIN > Identity & access.

3. Under Users and API Clients, click Create API client.

4. Click Quick to create an API client that's associated with the current account.

5. Click Show additional details, and find the APIs table. The credential values you create with this API client can be used to access the APIs for all of the ​Akamai​ CDN products and services listed in this table. You'll need access to these APIs to complete the steps in this tutorial:

   • Identity Management (IDM): User Administration. You can use this API to create and manage groups, roles, and users. The Access level needs to be ADMIN.
   • Property Manager (PAPI). This is the tool used to set up your delivery product. The Access level needs to be READ-WRITE.
   • CPS. This is the Certificate Provisioning System API. You'll use this to secure the connection between a requesting client and ​Akamai​ edge servers. The Access level needs to be READ-WRITE.
   • Reporting API (optional). You can use this to generate report data for your website. The Access level needs to be READ-WRITE.

6. Click Hide additional details once you're done verifying.

7. In the Credentials section, click Download to store your credential values in an ID_{account}.txt file.

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You have one opportunity to save your client_secret

The client_secret value is only available one time when creating the credential. Make sure you Download the credential at this step so you have a permanent, local record for reference. You won't be able to retrieve this information later.

8. Click Edit API Client to save the credential in a new API client.

9. Open the downloaded file with a text editor, and add the value [default] as a header in row 1. Your file should resemble this:

   ID_{account}.txt

   [default]
   client_secret = C113nt53KR3TN6N90yVuAgICxIRwsObLi0E67/N8eRN=
   host = abcd-efjhijkl1mn2o3-pqrs4tuvw567xyz8.luna.akamaiapis.net
   access_token = akab-acc35t0k3nodujqunph3w7hzp7-gtm6ij
   client_token = akab-c113ntt0k3n4qtari252bfxxbsl-yvsdj

10. Save the file in your home directory using .edgerc as the full filename. The default home directory location for various operating systems is typically:

    • Linux. /home/USERNAME/.edgerc

    • macOS. /Users/USERNAME/.edgerc

    • Windows. C:\Users\{username}\.edgerc

Get a cloud computing services account

The next step in this tutorial involves creating multiple Linode compute instances in a high availability setup. Linodes are cloud-based, Linux virtual machines used to store your website and website assets so they can be accessed by clients. Collectively, the virtual machines act as origin servers from which the CDN pulls, and then caches, your site content.

If you don’t have one already, create and set up an ​Akamai​ Cloud account to get access to the necessary tools to provision your Linode instances. See our Create a cloud computing services account guide for instructions and best practices when setting up your account.

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Akamai Cloud accounts require billing information

Akamai Cloud accounts are self-service and require some form of billing on file—like credit card, PayPal, or Google Pay. Talk to your ​Akamai​ account team about other billing options. To add additional payment methods after your account is created, see our Manage payment methods guide.

Get an access token

The operations you'll perform to create your origin are run through a separate API— Akamai Cloud's Linode API. To authorize requests to this API, you need to set up a personal access token for it.

1. Access Cloud Manager, and log in using your Akamai Cloud account information.

2. Click your username at the top of the screen, and select Login & Authentication from the menu.

3. Select the API Tokens tab.

4. Click Create Personal Access Token, and set these options:

   • Label. Give your token a unique name.

   • Expiry. You can shorten the lifecycle for this token, but we recommend that you leave it at 6 months.

   • Access. Ensure that all of the options are set to Read/Write.

5. Click Create Token to generate an API token string.

6. Download your token as personal_access_token.txt, and save it in a secure location.

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This is the only time you can save your access token

Make sure you store this token now. You won't be able to view it again after closing the Personal Access Token window.

7. Click I Have Saved My Personal Access Token to close the window and complete the process.

Review your site

How much storage space does your site currently require? When you create your Linode instances, pick a plan with the necessary storage space to hold your site and all of its components.