Origin servers

WordPress VIP maintains several origin data centers worldwide where VIP Platform environments are hosted. Origin servers for WordPress environments have application, database, batch, and object cache (Memcached) containers. Origin servers for Node.js environments have at minimum a Node.js application container and in some cases, a Redis container.

An origin server is a “source of truth” for the state of an application. It is not intended to handle all requests that are made to a WordPress VIP site. To protect the health and resilience of an origin server, requests to a site first pass through an edge cache server.

If the edge cache already has a cached response for a request, the cached response is returned. If the request meets specific criteria to bypass the page cache (e.g., a unique request, a request with no-cache headers) the request will be routed to the origin server, and the new response will be cached at the edge for future requests.

Insights into the duration of time it takes for an environment’s origin server to generate a response and send it back to the cache can be reviewed in the Insights & Metrics panel of the VIP Dashboard. 

Outgoing requests from an origin server

Outgoing requests (e.g., requests to an API not hosted by Automattic or VIP) made by a site hosted on the VIP Platform will originate from its origin data center. A publicly accessible list of IP ranges for origin data centers is available for reference.