[BlueOnyx:11880] Re: Varnish Cache

[Chris Gebhardt - VIRTBIZ Internet]

On 1/1/2013 10:57 PM, Joseph Chambers wrote:
> Hello,
>
> I want to run Varnish for available to all of my sites on the server.
>
> 1) How do I get it to start up if I ever reboot my server. For example; I know that I am running a non-standard implementation of ProFTPd in order to support TLS (FTP over SSL instead of FTPS which is natively supported). Therefore, service will fail on reboot. is this something I will worry about for Varnish?
> 2) How do I install it without breaking BluOynx?
>
> Any advice? I know how to shell in and install scripts but I'm not as smart as anyone reading this.

Joseph,
Welcome to the BX list.

 From my cursory look, it does appear that Varnish can be installed 
without extreme system modifications.   However, having it installed, 
and properly configuring it to do what you want it to do are two 
different issues entirely.

Not all sites are created equally.  There are static sites, dynamic 
sites, and of course some dynamic sites are more dynamic than others. 
In addition, sessions, cookies and so forth must be taken into account. 
  Dirk made a nice suggestion regarding the possibility of having a 3rd 
party application that would enable the cache on a site by site basis. 
However, since each site needs to be treated differently, it does seem 
to me that a great deal of configuration would need to be done for each 
site.

IMHO, I'm just not sure it's worth the effort.  In the real world, for 
most sites, I'm doubtful that this is the best way to address performance.

We've discussed offlist some concerns you have with a particular site, 
and I'm guessing that the relatively poor performance of that site is 
the reason you would consider a cache such as Varnish.   As mentioned 
offlist, there are other concerns with that particular site (enormous 
images up to a few-hundred kilobytes each being the low-hanging fruit) I 
would recommend tackling first.  The best accelerator or cache system 
will not fix a poorly constructed site.  I do not mention this in order 
to be contrary or to seem disrespectful.  But for my money and/or time, 
I'd rather be certain that the foundation is as solid as possible before 
throwing add-ons and extensions on top.

HTH,
-- 
Chris Gebhardt
VIRTBIZ Internet Services
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