In the previous post, i have describes the steps to setup web server that running on Nginx and PHP5.4 (PHP-FPM). The setup and configuration work well with the WordPress site. This article will describe how to speed up the existing NGINX + PHP web server with one of the popular web accelerator called Varnish Cache, also known as caching HTTP reverse proxy. Varnish cache will speed up the website delivery to the visitor and reduce the CPU time, less database requests and file lookups. This steps to setup varnish has been tested on CentOS 6, CentOS 7, Oracle Linux 7 and RHEL 7.
Setup Varnish in front of Nginx
Varnish is a HTTP accelerator that can run side by side with either Apache or Nginx web server. In this tutorial, i will setup Varnish to run on port 80 while NGINX on port 8080.
Benefits of Varnish
1. Reduce server CPU load and time
2. Increase website load speed
3. Can handle large number of websites visitors
4. Varnish supports load balancing
How to Setup Varnish
1. Setup Nginx, PHP5.4 (PHP-FPM) as web server. Refer to this tutorial.
2. Install varnish :
[root@vps ~]# wget https://repo.varnish-cache.org/redhat/varnish-3.0/el6/noarch/varnish-release/varnish-release-3.0-1.el6.noarch.rpm
[root@vps ~]# rpm -Uvh varnish-release-3.0-1.el6.noarch.rpm
[root@vps ~]# yum install varnish -y
3. Configure and setup Varnish :
Below configuration for /etc/sysconfig/varnish and /etc/varnish/default.vcl say that NGINX are running as the backend server on localhost at port 8080 while Varnish will run in front of it listening on port 80.
a. Modify /etc/sysconfig/varnish :
[root@vps ~]# vim /etc/sysconfig/varnish
Add the following. if your VPS running SSD disk, you can select varnish_storage as a cache method instead of memory (-s malloc) :
.. .. DAEMON_OPTS="-a :80 \ -T localhost:6082 \ -f /etc/varnish/default.vcl \ -u varnish -g varnish \ -S /etc/varnish/secret \ -p thread_pool_add_delay=2 \ -p thread_pools=2 \ -p thread_pool_min=400 \ -p thread_pool_max=4000 \ -p session_linger=50 \ -p sess_workspace=262144 \ -s file,/var/lib/varnish/varnish_storage.bin,512m" .. .. VARNISH_LISTEN_PORT=80 .. ..
b. Modify /etc/varnish/default.vcl :
[root@vps ~]# vim /etc/varnish/default.vcl
Add as below :
backend default { .host = "127.0.0.1"; .port = "8080"; .connect_timeout = 600s; .first_byte_timeout = 600s; .between_bytes_timeout = 600s; .max_connections = 800; } acl purge { "127.0.0.1"; } sub vcl_recv { # Allow purge requests if (req.request == "PURGE") { if (!client.ip ~ purge) { error 405 "Not allowed."; } ban("req.url ~ ^" + req.url + " && req.http.host == " + req.http.host); return(lookup); } # Add header for sending client ip to backend set req.http.X-Forwarded-For = client.ip; # Normalize content-encoding if (req.http.Accept-Encoding) { if (req.url ~ "\.(jpg|png|gif|gz|tgz|bz2|lzma|tbz)(\?.*|)$") { remove req.http.Accept-Encoding; } elsif (req.http.Accept-Encoding ~ "gzip") { set req.http.Accept-Encoding = "gzip"; } elsif (req.http.Accept-Encoding ~ "deflate") { set req.http.Accept-Encoding = "deflate"; } else { remove req.http.Accept-Encoding; } } # Remove cookies and query string for real static files if (req.url ~ "^/[^?]+\.(gif|jpg|jpeg|swf|css|js|txt|flv|mp3|mp4|pdf|ico|png|gz|zip|lzma|bz2|tgz|tbz)(\?.*|)$") { unset req.http.cookie; set req.url = regsub(req.url, "\?.*$", ""); } # Don't cache admin if (req.url ~ "((wp-(login|admin|comments-post.php|cron.php))|login)" || req.url ~ "preview=true" || req.url ~ "xmlrpc.php") { return (pass); } else { unset req.http.cookie; } } sub vcl_hit { # purge cached objects from memory if (req.request == "PURGE") { purge; error 200 "Purged"; } } sub vcl_miss { # purge cached objects varients from memory if (req.request == "PURGE") { purge; error 404 "Purged varients"; } } sub vcl_fetch { # Dont cache admin if (req.url ~ "(wp-(login|admin|comments-post.php|cron.php))|login" || req.url ~ "preview=true" || req.url ~ "xmlrpc.php") { return (deliver); } else { if ( beresp.ttl > 0s ) { unset beresp.http.set-cookie; } } } sub vcl_deliver { # Remove unnecessary headers remove resp.http.Server; remove resp.http.X-Powered-By; remove resp.http.X-Varnish; remove resp.http.Via; # DIAGNOSTIC HEADERS if (obj.hits > 0) { set resp.http.X-Cache = "HIT"; } else { set resp.http.X-Cache = "MISS"; } }
4. Reconfigure NGINX to work with Varnish :
a. Configure default.conf :
[root@vps ~]# vim /etc/nginx/conf.d/default.conf
Add the following :
.. server { listen 127.0.0.1:8080; server_name localhost; ..
b. Configure common.conf :
[root@vps ~]# vim /etc/nginx/conf.d/common.conf
.. .. listen 127.0.0.1:8080; .. ..
c. Configure Vhost for domain example.com :
[root@vps ~]# vim /etc/nginx/sites-available/example.com.conf
Change listen to 127.0.0.1:8080; :
server { listen 127.0.0.1:8080; server_name example.com; rewrite ^/(.*)$ http://www.example.com/$1 permanent; } ..
5. Restart NGINX, php-fpm and Varnish :
[root@vps ~]# service nginx restart; service php-fpm restart; service varnish restart
6. Make sure NGINX listening to port 8080 and Varnish port 80 :
[root@vps ~]# netstat -plunt | grep LISTEN
tcp 0 0 0.0.0.0:80 0.0.0.0:* LISTEN 3119/varnishd tcp 0 0 127.0.0.1:8080 0.0.0.0:* LISTEN 3065/nginx
Thats All.