Activate on production

Once all of the configuration steps and testing are complete, you can push your property to the production network to distribute your content to end users. This process assumes that the target property has already been activated on the staging network for testing.

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If your account is enabled for mandatory domain validation, you must prove ownership of your domain to Akamai as a prerequisite to activation. See Activate your property.

How to

1. If necessary, access the target property on ​Akamai Control Center​:

   a. Use the drop-down in the top right to select the ​Control Center​ account you used to create the property.

   b. Go to ☰ > CDN > Properties.

   c. Enter the name of your property in the Filter by Property or Hostname field.

   d. Click the Property Name to open it.

2. Click the Version <#> for the property you want to activate.

3. Click the Activate tab.

4. Click Activate v# on Production. In the Production Network Activation pop-up, verify the activation settings:

   • Fast activation. Enabled by default. Keep this option turned on to speed up the activation process.
   • Cancel activation if error rate increases. This check is meant to detect large changes in traffic or error rates. Leave this option deselected if these changes are expected based on your new property version configuration. See How activation works.
   • Validation details. Any warnings carried over from the configuration will be displayed here. You can click Cancel and edit the configuration to acknowledge them.
   • Override block of hostname moves. ​Akamai​ applies a temporary block on a hostname that's been moved, in order to check its validity. Enabling this skips this temporary block, for example, if you've just moved your property from another account. Note that this can increase the number of hits to your origin server.
   • Notes. You can include a description of this version's activation.
   • Notify via email. This defaults to the email address set for the active ​Control Center​ user. You can change it or add more. Separate multiple addresses with a comma (",").

5. Click Activate v# on Production.

6. Your property should be ready for live traffic servers in under 4 minutes, but can be influenced by a variety of factors, including the number of live traffic servers being updated. Now, you can:

   • Monitor. Follow updates on the status bar to track progress.
   • Click View Details. This lets you review settings and information regarding the property.
   • Wait for the confirmation email. Any email set in Notify via email will get an email when the activation is complete.

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You can cancel an activation at any point until the property version fully propagates to our network. Canceling the activation reverts the property to its last active version(if applicable).

7. Review the validation results. If there are any errors, you need to resolve these to be able to proceed, but you can activate a property version that yields less severe warnings.

What's next

To go live and deliver your content to end users, you need to modify your origin DNS settings wherever you manage your DNS. Replace your existing CNAME record with a new one, setting its value to the edge hostname you assigned to your property.

If you need to back out of production, the first thing to do is to remove the DNS CNAME record for the edge hostname from your DNS. See Deactivate your property.