Which AWS service is most appropriate for delivering static content to users around the world with low latency?

Explanation

Amazon CloudFront is a content delivery network (CDN) service. It uses edge locations to deliver static and dynamic content with low latency. It is also commonly used in combination with Amazon S3 for static site delivery.

Per-choice explanations

Practical Use

Amazon CloudFront is the content delivery network (CDN) service provided by AWS. It caches content at edge locations around the world and delivers it from the edge geographically closest to the end user, reducing latency. Supported origins include Amazon S3 buckets, applications running on Amazon EC2, Application Load Balancer, and external HTTP/HTTPS servers. Both static and dynamic content can be delivered. On the exam, CloudFront is the expected answer for the prompt asking which AWS service is used to deliver static content to users around the world with low latency. Common distractors include AWS CloudTrail (API call history), Amazon RDS (relational database), and AWS IAM (authentication and authorization). None of these services have content delivery as their primary purpose, so they can be eliminated as long as the scope of each service is understood. In practice, placing Amazon S3 as the origin with CloudFront in front of it is the standard pattern for static site delivery. This combination provides HTTPS delivery, custom domain support, reduced data transfer through caching, and request protection through AWS WAF integration. CLF-C02 asks about the role of CloudFront and the hierarchical relationship among edge locations, Regions, and Availability Zones. SAA-C03 and higher exams go further into Origin Access Control (OAC) for preventing direct access to Amazon S3, restricted distribution through signed URLs and signed cookies, and edge processing with CloudFront Functions and Lambda@Edge.