AEMaaCS: how do I know if a file is getting served from dispatcher vs CDN?

[jayv25585659]

1. when I worked on a AEM setup usng managed services, Cloudfront inserts extra response header that will tell me if the page is getting served from CDN or from origin.
2. Because it managed service, I can login to the dispatcher and I can manually check if the page is already cache in the dispatcher or needs to be fetched from the publisher.

How can I do both of these on AEMaaCS?

[giuseppebaglio]

hi @jayv25585659,

For AEMasCS you can determine if a file is served from the CDN or the Dispatcher by examining the HTTP response headers.

The Adobe-provided CDN (Fastly) in AEMaaCS typically adds a debug header that indicates the cache status: look for the X-Cache response header.

Values meaning:

• HIT: The resource was served from the CDN cache
• MISS: The resource was not found in the CDN cache and was fetched from the origin (which is the AEM Dispatcher/Publish stack)
• EXPIRED: The resource was cached but had expired, so it was fetched again from the origin.

In short, if the X-Cache header value is anything other than HIT (typically MISS or EXPIRED), the request has hit your Dispatcher/AEM Publish stack.

[jayv25585659]

is there a way to know if the page is already in the dispatcher or had to be fetched from the publisher?

In managed services, it's easy to check this (as I mentioned above) since clients can login to the dispatcher.

Thanks again.

[giuseppebaglio]

Check the AEM Dispatcher log, a Dispatcher cache HIT will be visible in Dispatcher access logs but not in AEM Publish request.log, whereas a MISS/PASS will appear in both layers.

You can download the log file from Cloud Manager, or if you use Splunk, you can query the log (see this response here)

[arunpatidar]

Hi @jayv25585659 

You can also check the Last-Modified response header. If Date and Last-Modified are same then page is served from publisher, if not then it is either from CDN or dispatcher cache.

[VishalKa5]

Hi @jayv25585659 ,

In AEM as a Cloud Service (AEMaaCS), you can’t directly access the dispatcher or CDN servers like in Managed Services, but you can still check where your content is served from using response headers.
To check if it’s served from the CDN (Akamai):
Look at the response headers in your browser’s Network tab — you’ll usually see something like:

X-Akamai-Cache: HIT → served from CDN cache

X-Akamai-Cache: MISS → fetched from AEM origin

To check if it’s served from the Dispatcher (AEM layer):
You can enable or review dispatcher-level headers such as:

X-Cache: HIT from cloudfront or X-Cache: MISS from cloudfront

X-Dispatcher-Info (if configured in your dispatcher config via clientheaders.any or dispatcher.any)

Since you don’t have SSH access to dispatcher in AEMaaCS, you must rely on response headers and AEM logs (Developer Console) to confirm caching behavior.
Use browser response headers — Akamai headers tell you if it’s from CDN, and dispatcher headers (if enabled) tell you if it’s from AEM cache.

Thank you..