Origins

Azion Origins allows you to customize the origins for your content, the Host header, and HMAC authentication credentials.

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Important — We’re releasing a significant update to our platform. To learn more about the changes and required migration steps, see the API v4 rollout page.

important — The Origins feature has been replaced by Connectors. For more information about the new product, visit the Connectors reference.

Origins allows you to customize the source address of your Applications content, the Host header of your application, the path, and the HMAC authentication credentials for protected services.

An origin represents the server from which Azion retrieves your content, which can be an object storage service or a cloud server. Once an origin is connected to your application, edge nodes cache the content from the origin server and serve it to users upon a request.

Implementation

Scope	Resource
Applications first steps	First steps
Load Balancer module	Load Balancer

Origin Type

There are three options for you to customize your origin:

Single Origin: create one Address for each origin.
Load Balancer: add multiple Addressess and determine load weight and server role.
Object Storage: select a bucket and prefix from the Azion Object Storage to serve the application.

Load Balancer

When Load Balancer is selected as an origin type, you can configure the Balancing Method to determine how large amounts of requests are distributed among addresses, add multiple Addresses to your origin, and change the Sever Role and Weight of each address.

Learn more about Load Balancer

Object Storage

When Object Storage is selected as an origin type, you must add the Bucket Name and Prefix.

The bucket name is defined when you create or modify an Object Storage bucket.

The prefix is the path to the folder within the bucket that stores the objects. This field can be left blank if you wish your application’s origin to be the root of the bucket.

go to Object Storage reference

Host Header

The Host header is used by your origin to identify the virtualhost and locate your content or application. When configuring an origin in Azion Console, you have the option to customize the value sent by Azion in the Host header.

If the Host Header field is left blank, Azion will use the same address specified in the Address field as the default. If your origin is configured to respond to a virtualhost using the same address as configured in DNS, you can leave the Host Header field empty.

However, if your origin responds to a virtualhost at an address different from the one set in DNS, you must fill in a custom value for the Host header in FQDN format, for example, www.yourdomain.com.

Customizing the Host header is essential if your origin responds to a virtualhost at an address other than the one configured in DNS.

Alternatively, you can use the ${host} variable in the Host Header field to instruct the edge nodes to pass on the Host header received from your visitors to the origin. This setting is useful if you have multiple virtualhosts being served by the same origin.

Origin Path

Origin Path allows you to specify a custom path from which edge nodes will request your origin content. Azion appends the Origin Path to the URI when forwarding the request to your origin, but it doesn’t append the URI for user requests. For instance, if you determine that the path of your origin is under /secure and you have configured your application to be delivered through yourdomain.com, the /secure path won’t be part of the request to the end user.

The definition of an Origin Path is optional. If not specified, only the root URI will be considered.

Address

To define an origin for your content, you need to specify the address of your server as either a domain name in FQDN format or an IPv4/IPv6 address. If you have defined the Origin Protocol Policy as Enforce HTTP or Enforce HTTPS, you can customize the origin port using the notation host:port.

Origin Protocol Policy

Azion’s delivery architecture offers you the flexibility to tailor the type of connection between the edge nodes and your origin based on your specific requirements:

Preserve HTTP/HTTPS protocol: this option maintains the same connection protocol (HTTP or HTTPS) and ports used by your users when accessing your content on Azion. It ensures seamless continuity from Azion to your origin server.
Enforce HTTP: with this setting, the connection between Azion’s edge nodes and your origin will be exclusively through HTTP, regardless of the connection protocol and ports used by your users to access Azion’s content. You can customize a specific port for your origin in the Address field, deviating from the default port (80 for HTTP) if desired.
Enforce HTTPS: this option mandates the connection between Azion’s edge nodes and your origin to be exclusively through HTTPS, regardless of the connection protocol and ports used by your users to access Azion’s content. You can customize a specific port for your origin in the Address field, different from the default port (443 for HTTPS) if required.

HMAC Authentication

For Single Origin, if the origin is located in an object storage with private access, you must provide HMAC authentication credentials. When enabling HMAC authentication, your private content will begin to be delivered to your users through Applications.

You should include in the HMAC access credentials given by your storage provider: Region, Access Key, and Secret Key.

Secret Key is protected by being displayed only to its users with write permission and maintaining their access security.

Timeouts

Displays timeout setting in seconds pre-defined by Azion. To customize timeout values, contact the support team.