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Varnish 4.0.2 released

varnish-cache.org

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Re: Varnish 4.0.2 released

#2
> If you are using Varnish Cache for business, consider attending the Varnish Summits

If anyone from Varnish AS is reading this (OP?), please consider having a Varnish Summit on the east coast of the US sometime.

Soon.

Please.

Re: Varnish 4.0.2 released

#4
post #2

> If you are using Varnish Cache for business, consider attending the Varnish Summits If anyone from Varnish AS is reading this (OP?), please consider having a Varnish Summit on the east coast of the US sometime. Soon. Please.

I'll let the right people know. Thanks for the feedback.

Re: Varnish 4.0.2 released

#5

We've been long vacillating on using Varnish to power our E-commerce store but from what we've read, Varnish is not a good solution in cases where cookies are part of most of web traffic. Is this true?

Every site has something that can be cached. Images, js, headers, popular product lists, etc.

If a specific page item can be cached is really up to if the backend application takes cookie state into account when the page item is made.

The Varnish default of not caching anything when cookies are present is because we have no idea if the backend writes "Welcome back, krat0sprakhar!" when it sees the username in an incoming cookie. Sending that item to every user would be unfortunate.

Other than that, I'd recommend you evaluate your needs and not just pick a technology. If your page response times are low enough already, and your backends/appservers scale to as many concurrent buyers you think you need, you're good without Varnish/caching.

Re: Varnish 4.0.2 released

#6

We've been long vacillating on using Varnish to power our E-commerce store but from what we've read, Varnish is not a good solution in cases where cookies are part of most of web traffic. Is this true?

Varnish is extremely flexible. Its primary design goal is to be a programmable reverse proxy cache -- so it's almost certainly a better choice for a challenging session-dependent use case such as e-commerce than repurposed web servers (such as Apache, nginx, etc).

If every single dynamic page of your site requires knowledge of the session, and must hit the backend, then you're kind of stuck. But there are lots of ways to design around that.

For example... Edge Side Includes, supported by Varnish, let you do front-end caching of page fragments, stitched together by the proxy rather than the web application. This can give you a huge boost (to performance and scale), even if you have to hit the web application for some part of the page.

Keep in mind, once you start adding front-end caching to your application, you need to think of your cache as part of your app. :-)

You might want to take a look at the Turpentine module for Magento, which tightly integrates Varnish with Magento. It's a good example of retrofitting front-end caching, cookie generation, and ESI fragment caching into an existing e-commerce application.

Re: Varnish 4.0.2 released

#7
post #2

> If you are using Varnish Cache for business, consider attending the Varnish Summits If anyone from Varnish AS is reading this (OP?), please consider having a Varnish Summit on the east coast of the US sometime. Soon. Please.

Good news, I'm told they are planning an east coast event in the spring.

Re: Varnish 4.0.2 released

#8
post #5

We've been long vacillating on using Varnish to power our E-commerce store but from what we've read, Varnish is not a good solution in cases where cookies are part of most of web traffic. Is this true?

Every site has something that can be cached. Images, js, headers, popular product lists, etc. If a specific page item can be cached is really up to if the backend application takes cookie state into account when the page item is made. The Varnish default of not caching anything when cookies are present is because we have no idea if the backend writes "Welcome back, krat0sprakhar!" when it sees the username in an inco…

I'd add that edge side includes (https://www.varnish-cache.org/trac/wiki/ESIfeatures) can be amazingly useful. Even if you've offloaded all of your static content to a CDN, the ESI features of varnish alone can be a huge win.

Re: Varnish 4.0.2 released

#9

We've been long vacillating on using Varnish to power our E-commerce store but from what we've read, Varnish is not a good solution in cases where cookies are part of most of web traffic. Is this true?

Nearly every site uses cookies in some way. Many of them (like mine!) are still able to make excellent use of Varnish.

Re: Varnish 4.0.2 released

#10

We've been long vacillating on using Varnish to power our E-commerce store but from what we've read, Varnish is not a good solution in cases where cookies are part of most of web traffic. Is this true?

If your site is not completely dynamic there is no sane reason to hit the database or disk for every visitor. Serve it out of the cache. Improve your visitors' experience, and lower the load on your hardware to insignificant levels.
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