[BlueOnyx:11883] Re: Varnish Cache

[Ken - Precision Web Hosting, Inc]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Chris Gebhardt - VIRTBIZ Internet" <cobaltfacts at virtbiz.com>
To: "BlueOnyx General Mailing List" <blueonyx at mail.blueonyx.it>
Sent: Wednesday, January 02, 2013 8:39 AM
Subject: [BlueOnyx:11880] Re: Varnish Cache


>
> 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


It might be worth a try to get a  www.cloudflare.com account for that one 
site.

They have a couple of options that might help with the images:
Image resizing: Automatically resize images based on the visitor's device 
and how the image is used on the page. Requires JavaScript.
Lazy loader: Automatically turns all images into load-on-demand. Images on 
your site are not loaded until the visitor scrolls to their location.

Polish: image optimization/ PRO / BUSINESS / ENTERPRISE
Strips metadata and compresses your images for faster page load times.
Note: For the service to take effect immediately, you will have to cache 
purge.

Basic (Lossless): Reduce the size of PNG, JPEG, and GIF files - no impact on 
visual quality.
High (Lossy): Further reduce the size of JPEG files for faster image 
loading.
Larger JPEGs are converted to progressive images, loading a lower-resolution 
image first and ending in a higher-resolution version. Not recommended for 
hi-res photography sites.



----
Ken Marcus