Origin Servers
WP Cloud maintains several origin data centers worldwide where end-user WordPress environments are hosted. A site’s origin location may be set during the site creation process.
A site’s origin serves as the definitive “source of truth” for the current state of the site’s settings and content.
If the edge cache has already cached a response for the request, that cached response will be returned.
If the request meets specific criteria to skip the page cache (for example, a unique request, or one with no-cache headers), it will be sent to the origin server. The origin server will then generate a new response. If possible, the response gets cached at the edge for future requests.
Insights into requests served by a site’s origin server, resources used, request time, and non-edge page cache health can be reviewed via the available Web Server Logs, Site Metrics, and WP Cloud Insights.
Edge Servers
WP Cloud’s CDN is a global network of edge cache servers, each used to store content closest to an end user. If appropriate, origin servers may serve as an edge server for sites hosted in another location.
Each edge data center has a load balancer that accepts the request and then determines if it needs to route the traffic to the origin data center or, if edge cache is enabled, serve the content directly from the edge. If an uncached request is made, edge servers connect the user directly to our origin servers as needed, reducing hops.
Geo-affinity
Sites may have a specific origin set during creation.
When creating a site, the geo_affinity API parameter may be used to set a site’s geo-affinity. If specified, the site will be assigned a primary pool server based on the preferred origin data center location.
The currently allowed origins are those returned by the get-available-datacenters endpoint. ams (Amsterdam), dca (Ashburn), bur (Los Angeles), and dfw (Dallas) are examples at the time of this writing.
After a site is created, it is not possible to change the site’s origin server but it is possible to clone a site to a new origin location. A site’s origin server location may temporarily change in the event of automatic failover.
Server Locations
| City | Abbreviation |
|---|---|
| Amsterdam (Origin) | AMS (Origin) |
| Ashburn (Origin) | DCA (Origin) |
| Atlanta | ATL |
| Chicago | MDW |
| Dallas (Origin) | DFW (Origin) |
| Denver | DEN |
| Frankfurt | HHN |
| Hong Kong | HKG |
| Johannesburg | JNB |
| London | LHR |
| Los Angeles (Origin) | BUR (Origin) |
| Madrid | MAD |
| Miami | MIA |
| Milan | MXP |
| Mumbai | BOM |
| New Jersey | EWR |
| New York | JFK |
| Osaka | KIX |
| Paris | CDG |
| San Jose | SJC |
| Sao Paulo | GRU |
| Seattle | SEA |
| Singapore | SIN |
| Stockholm | ARN |
| Sydney | SYD |
| Tokyo | NRT |
| Toronto | YYZ |
| Vienna | VIE |
FAQ
Does data live outside of the selected data center?
WP Cloud respects EU law related to the proper handling of data being transferred elsewhere and may store data on servers located both in the US and in the EU. Due to our automated failover technology, It is not possible to restrict the data associated with your site to a single geographic location.
Why doesn’t my domain’s DNS IP reflect the designated origin server location?
DNS IP locations and edge server locations do not reflect the physical location of their origin server or the server’s IP.
All inbound requests route through an Anycast range of IPs that clients point their domain names to. The Anycast configuration determines the closest origin or edge data center to the requester.
