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Fastly Stores power fast decisions and edge data access

MJ Jones

Principal Product Manager, Compute, Fastly

Bryan Hackett

Principal Product Manager, Edge Data, Fastly

As web applications grow in sophistication, a simple concept like service configuration can become complex to apply, and a lightweight task like matching a user to the appropriate content can introduce crippling latency at global scale. Some developers in this situation trade value to get performance - others create more complex treatments only to find that they are surprisingly difficult to manage at scale. And just about all developers experience seemingly unavoidable constraints, hindering innovation and productivity.

Our vision at Fastly is to allow developers to apply complex logic at the edge with our edge data solutions while also maintaining an ease of operation, making it easy to get started and simple to grow over time. With that in mind, we are pleased to announce that two key offerings of our edge data solutions, KV Store and Config Store, are now generally available.  

So how do you know which data store(s) is perfect for your use case?

Configuration of your application is fundamentally best handled by the Config Store and Secret Store. They provide a consistent way to store and share environment variables (Config Store) and Secrets.   

KV Store can be thought of as the primary store for application data. It utilizes the familiar key value pattern for storing and accessing data.  It is globally replicated, durable, and edge writable. Write to it in Sydney and read from that same data in Frankfurt. It’s that simple. 

KV Store provides an ideal place to store items such as large lists, user objects, and small static content items that need to be accessed from edge applications.  The diagram below depicts a URL redirect use case for retired URLs to prevent a drop in SEO rankings.

An important feature of all stores is that they can be created and shared across applications. This reduces the time needed and chances for error when establishing new applications.  

See below for a summary of these key offerings along with Secret Store (now in beta).

Fastly Edge Data Solutions

Fastly Store

Capabilities

Perfect for:

KV Store

Globally accessible durable storage, read/write at the edge, faster than core clouds, faster than other edge clouds

Large list management, small static content, and data (ex: customer data, user data, personalization data, etc)

Config Store

Read at edge; Deployment flexibility and single microsecond edge decisions from memory

Environment variables

Secret Store (now in Beta)

Secure storage at the edge

Storing secrets (Ex: API keys, credentials)

Conclusion

For many developers data location is not a benefit, it’s a constraint. Fastly’s edge data solutions remove data location obstacles by making critical data available everywhere. They simplify global development with a shareable and low friction design, and empower developers to reduce costs by moving or replicating data to Fastly’s global edge. 

For more information visit our developer hub or sign up for a free trial of our edge serverless solutions today.