ImageKit has distributed servers globally for processing and optimizing your images. The images processed and optimized by these ImageKit servers are then delivered to your end users using a Content Delivery Network (CDN) as discussed here.
Where are ImageKit's servers located?
ImageKit's processing servers are located in 4 regions - Frankfurt (Germany), North Virginia (United States), Singapore City (Singapore) and Sydney (Australia). Each location comprises of a cluster of servers to process your images along with other necessary infrastructure to ensure fast image delivery and processing of your images. There are no separate charges to avail the benefits of these distributed servers.
What is the benefit of having multiple server locations?
Distributing the servers across the globe has two benefits – better redundancy and better performance.
We always strive for 100% uptime. A particular geographical region may get impacted by a natural calamity or network failure. To mitigate disruption of ImageKit’s service because of these reasons, the servers are spread in multiple regions.
The other benefit of better performance is discussed later in this post.
Which server will be used for my account?
For every account on ImageKit, there is one core location assigned. This core location is decided on the basis of proximity to the country provided during the sign up and it can be changed later as well by contacting the ImageKit team. For example, if during sign up, you select your country as Italy, then your core location would be setup as Frankfurt (Germany) as this core location is geographically closest to Italy.
How does selecting the right core location improve performance?
If you are using ImageKit to store the images in the media library and deliver them, then the selection of the core locations is irrelevant as performance across all locations is the same in such cases. Though, choosing a location closest to where your users are would be the best. For example, if you are based out of the US and your users are from Europe, select Europe as the core location.
However, if you are using ImageKit to optimize images in one of your existing storages or servers, then selecting the correct core location is critical to achieve good performance. Ideally, the core location selected in ImageKit should be close to the location of the storage or server that you are attaching to ImageKit.
For example, if the image storage attached to ImageKit is located in the United States and your core server location is set as Singapore, then there would be a lot of latency while fetching images from your image storage in the US from the core server in Singapore. This latency in fetching the images can be cut down by setting the core server location for your account to North Virginia (United States) which is geographically closer to your image storage.
How do I check or change the core server location?
The core location is selected automatically based on the country you enter while signing up for ImageKit. This country can also be checked in the Account Settings section of your dashboard. If this country is same as or close to the location of your image storage or server attached to ImageKit, then you need not change the core server location.
Still, if you need to check or change the core server location assigned to your account or want to understand more about how this globally distributed network is used for your account, please create a support ticket from your ImageKit dashboard.
