After a deployment, CloudFront keeps serving stale files until TTLs expire. Which approach refreshes content fastest — and what's the better long-term alternative?
A.Lower all TTLs to 0 permanently
TTL 0 defeats caching entirely — origin gets hammered.
B.Create an invalidation for the changed paths — better: use versioned file names so invalidations aren't needed
Correct. Invalidation now; versioning as the durable fix.
C.Delete and recreate the distribution
Nuclear option — also changes the distribution domain.
D.Purge the origin bucket
The origin already has new files; the cache is stale.
Why this answer
Invalidations force-expire specific paths immediately (limited free tier per month). But cache-busting file names (app.v2.js or content-hash names) is the architecturally correct pattern — deploys are instant and you never pay invalidation costs.
Correct answer: B · Last reviewed 2026-11-04
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