Benchmarks

• Varnish, Squid 2.6 and 3.0 with Nginx backend using http_load

Quick -n-dirty features from the FAQ

• reverse proxy only
• no built-in compression
• no built-in ssl (pound or stunnel can be used)
• no cache view (use x-varnish headers for debugging)
  • purge objects with url.purge {url regex}
  • conifgurable headers can be used through custom headers in the vcl file
• memory managment done by the OS - no tweaking
• can change conf on the run
• has a rewrite engine
• requires a c compiler for running
• uses vcl conf files - 'man 7 vcl'
• pass is request based operation and pass is for the while tcp session
• can perform load balancing: round-robin, ???
• all log in memory, can be outputted using commands:
  • varnishlog client ip: varnishlog -c -o ReqStart 192.0.2.123
  • varnishlog backend ip: varnishlog -b -o TxHeader 192.0.2.123
  • varnishncsa: w3c logs
• can do x-forwarded-for through vcl configuration
• can set headers through vcl configuration
• support custom error
• can ignore get variables through vcl configuration

Varnish Utils (monitoring, logs and stats)

• Running daemon stat (cache statistics) - varnishstat
• Full log (for detail debugging) - arnishlog
• Standard web log (NCSA) - varnishncsa
• Top like utility - varnishtop
• Request histogram - varnishhist