Working with Compute services

You can create a Compute service and connect it to a Compute project directly from the web interface. Once you create your service, you can make refinements and updates to your configuration through the CLI or by editing the service in the web interface, depending on the task you're trying to complete.

The web interface also allows you to do other things to manage existing Fastly services, like deactivate or reactivate them and delete them.

Before you begin

Before you create your first Fastly service, be sure you understand how services and versions work and service creation limits. You'll also need to understand the Fastly web interface controls before using them to work with your Fastly services.

Some steps require using the Fastly CLI. If you haven't already, follow the steps for creating an API token, making sure it has global scope. Then, download and install the Fastly CLI and use that token to authenticate your account before continuing.

Creating a new Compute service

There are several ways to create a Compute service:

• Use one of our starter kits, which provide the basic set up for a Compute project.
• Upload an existing project from your computer.
• Create an empty service and finish setting up things later.

Editing your services

You might want to edit a version of an existing service to do things like:

• change the amount of time information is retained in cache memory for a service
• configure a service to temporarily serve stale content should your origin server need to be unavailable for an extended period of time (for example, taken offline for maintenance)
• decrease the amount of time Fastly will wait for your origin server to respond to a request for content

Editing and activating versions of services

Fastly locks versions of services you've already activated to make rollbacks safer and provide version control. You can duplicate (clone) any existing service version, active or inactive, and edit that cloned version. You must activate new versions of services to deploy their configurations. Configuration changes are never automatically activated.

To make changes to a service and activate a new version, follow the steps below:

1. Log in to the Fastly web interface.
2. From the Home page, select the appropriate service. You can use the search box to search by ID, name, or domain.
3. From the Edit configuration menu, select the appropriate service configuration action:
   • Select Clone version [version number] (active) to clone the active version of the service for editing.
   • Select Edit version [version number] (latest draft) to edit the latest draft of the service.
4. Click Activate. The new version of the service is activated and appears in the event log.

Deleting a service

Fastly allows you to delete any service you create, along with all of its versions. Fastly does not offer a way to delete specific versions of a service, however. Service versions are meant to be a historic log of the changes that were made to a service. To undo changes introduced by a particular service version, you can always go back to a previous version and reactivate or clone a new service version based on any old version.

To delete any service along with all of its versions, follow the steps below:

1. Log in to the Fastly web interface.
2. From the Home page, select the appropriate service. You can use the search box to search by ID, name, or domain.
3. From the Options menu, select Deactivate.
4. Click Confirm and deactivate to confirm you want to deactivate your service and acknowledge that you no longer want to serve traffic with it.
5. From the Options menu, select Delete and then click Confirm and delete to delete the service.

Other things you can do

In addition to creating or editing services, you can rename them, deactivate or reactivate specific versions of them, and delete them.

Renaming services

To rename your service, follow the steps below:

1. Log in to the Fastly web interface.
2. From the Home page, select the appropriate service. You can use the search box to search by ID, name, or domain.
3. From the Options menu, select Edit service name.
4. In the Service name field, enter a new service name.
5. Click Apply. The newly renamed service name appears.

Adding comments to service versions

Service versions can include comments to label them (e.g., to identify reasons for changes in that version). You can add and update version comments on both locked and activated service versions.

1. Log in to the Fastly web interface.
2. From the Home page, select the appropriate service. You can use the search box to search by ID, name, or domain.
3. Click Edit configuration and then select the option to clone the active version.

4. Click Add comment in the upper right corner of the web interface.

   

   The comment window appears.

   

5. In the Comment field, enter a meaningful comment for the version.

6. Click Save. The truncated version of the comment appears where the Add comment link used to be.

   

Deactivating a service

To deactivate a service, follow the steps below:

1. Log in to the Fastly web interface.
2. From the Home page, select the appropriate service. You can use the search box to search by ID, name, or domain.
3. From the Options menu, select Deactivate.
4. In the Enter service name field, enter the exact service name to deactivate.
5. Click Confirm and deactivate to confirm you want to deactivate your service and acknowledge that you no longer want to serve traffic with it.

You can also activate or deactivate a service via the API. Did you accidentally delete a service? We can help.

Reactivating a service

To reactivate a service, follow the steps below:

1. Log in to the Fastly web interface.
2. From the Home page, select the appropriate service. You can use the search box to search by ID, name, or domain.
3. Click Edit configuration and then select the option to clone the active version.
4. Click Activate. The service is reactivated.
5. If you removed the DNS CNAME records for the service's domains when you deactivated the service, you should add new DNS CNAME records now.

Getting help with accidental service deletions

Services can be deactivated or deleted. Deactivated services can be reactivated at any time, but once they've been deleted you must contact Customer Support to have them restored. When sending your request, remember to include:

• your customer ID
• your company name
• your service ID (the name of the service you want restored)

Customer Support will notify you when your service has been restored.

What's next

Learn more about working with Compute services.