What is Varnish and what are its top alternatives?
Varnish is a powerful HTTP accelerator designed to improve web performance by caching web content. It serves as a reverse proxy cache and is known for its ability to handle high traffic websites efficiently. Varnish can significantly reduce server load and improve response times by caching static content and serving it directly to clients. However, Varnish can be complex to configure and may require advanced knowledge to maximize its benefits.
- NGINX: NGINX is a popular open-source web server and reverse proxy option that is highly flexible and scalable. It offers features like load balancing, caching, and SSL termination. Pros: Easy to configure, lightweight, supports a wide range of plugins. Cons: May not be as specialized for caching as Varnish.
- Apache Traffic Server: Apache Traffic Server is an open-source caching and proxy server that can handle large amounts of traffic efficiently. It offers caching, reverse proxy, and load balancing features. Pros: High performance, extensible with plugins. Cons: Configuration can be complex.
- Squid: Squid is a powerful proxy caching server that can enhance web performance by caching frequently accessed content. It supports HTTP, HTTPS, FTP, and more. Pros: Robust caching capabilities, versatile in handling various protocols. Cons: Configuration can be challenging for beginners.
- HAProxy: HAProxy is a reliable and high-performance TCP/HTTP load balancer that can also be used for proxying and rate limiting. It offers advanced load balancing algorithms. Pros: Fast and efficient, supports SSL termination. Cons: Not specifically designed for caching.
- LiteSpeed Web Server: LiteSpeed Web Server is a high-performance commercial web server with built-in caching capabilities. It offers features like QUIC support and LSQUIC for improved performance. Pros: Fast, efficient caching, supports QUIC. Cons: Cost for commercial license.
- Caddy: Caddy is a modern web server with automatic HTTPS and advanced caching capabilities. It is easy to configure and supports HTTP/2 by default. Pros: Easy to set up, automatic HTTPS, great performance. Cons: Limited advanced features compared to Varnish.
- ServingHUB: ServingHUB is a cloud-based content delivery network (CDN) that offers advanced caching and optimization features to accelerate websites. It includes easy setup and seamless integration with various platforms. Pros: Fully managed, scalable, detailed analytics. Cons: Subscription-based pricing.
- KeyCDN: KeyCDN is a content delivery network that provides fast and secure delivery of web content globally. It offers features like HTTP/2 support, real-time analytics, and DDoS protection. Pros: Fast performance, easy to use, affordable pricing. Cons: Less control over caching compared to Varnish.
- Fastly: Fastly is a powerful edge cloud platform that offers fast and secure content delivery, real-time analytics, and flexible configuration options. It can be used for caching, streaming, and security. Pros: Global network, real-time analytics, advanced security features. Cons: Higher cost for extensive usage.
- CloudFlare: CloudFlare is a popular CDN and security platform that offers content delivery, DDoS protection, and web optimization services. It can cache static content and accelerate dynamic content delivery. Pros: Easy to set up, free plan available, strong security features. Cons: Limited control over caching compared to Varnish.
Top Alternatives to Varnish
- NGINX
nginx [engine x] is an HTTP and reverse proxy server, as well as a mail proxy server, written by Igor Sysoev. According to Netcraft nginx served or proxied 30.46% of the top million busiest sites in Jan 2018. ...
- Redis
Redis is an open source (BSD licensed), in-memory data structure store, used as a database, cache, and message broker. Redis provides data structures such as strings, hashes, lists, sets, sorted sets with range queries, bitmaps, hyperloglogs, geospatial indexes, and streams. ...
- HAProxy
HAProxy (High Availability Proxy) is a free, very fast and reliable solution offering high availability, load balancing, and proxying for TCP and HTTP-based applications. ...
- Apache Traffic Server
It is a fast, scalable and extensible HTTP/1.1 and HTTP/2.0 compliant caching proxy server.Improve your response time, while reducing server load and bandwidth needs by caching and reusing frequently-requested web pages, images, and web ser ...
- Squid
Squid reduces bandwidth and improves response times by caching and reusing frequently-requested web pages. Squid has extensive access controls and makes a great server accelerator. It runs on most available operating systems, including Windows and is licensed under the GNU GPL. ...
- Section
Edge Compute Platform gives Dev and Ops engineers the access and control they need to run compute workloads on a distributed edge. ...
- Nuster
nuster is a high performance HTTP proxy cache server and RESTful NoSQL cache server based on HAProxy. ...
Varnish alternatives & related posts
NGINX
- High-performance http server1.4K
- Performance893
- Easy to configure730
- Open source607
- Load balancer530
- Free288
- Scalability288
- Web server225
- Simplicity175
- Easy setup136
- Content caching30
- Web Accelerator21
- Capability15
- Fast14
- High-latency12
- Predictability12
- Reverse Proxy8
- The best of them7
- Supports http/27
- Great Community5
- Lots of Modules5
- Enterprise version5
- High perfomance proxy server4
- Reversy Proxy3
- Streaming media delivery3
- Streaming media3
- Embedded Lua scripting3
- GRPC-Web2
- Blash2
- Lightweight2
- Fast and easy to set up2
- Slim2
- saltstack2
- Virtual hosting1
- Narrow focus. Easy to configure. Fast1
- Along with Redis Cache its the Most superior1
- Ingress controller1
- Advanced features require subscription10
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Recently I have been working on an open source stack to help people consolidate their personal health data in a single database so that AI and analytics apps can be run against it to find personalized treatments. We chose to go with a #containerized approach leveraging Docker #containers with a local development environment setup with Docker Compose and nginx for container routing. For the production environment we chose to pull code from GitHub and build/push images using Jenkins and using Kubernetes to deploy to Amazon EC2.
We also implemented a dashboard app to handle user authentication/authorization, as well as a custom SSO server that runs on Heroku which allows experts to easily visit more than one instance without having to login repeatedly. The #Backend was implemented using my favorite #Stack which consists of FeathersJS on top of Node.js and ExpressJS with PostgreSQL as the main database. The #Frontend was implemented using React, Redux.js, Semantic UI React and the FeathersJS client. Though testing was light on this project, we chose to use AVA as well as ESLint to keep the codebase clean and consistent.
Around the time of their Series A, Pinterest’s stack included Python and Django, with Tornado and Node.js as web servers. Memcached / Membase and Redis handled caching, with RabbitMQ handling queueing. Nginx, HAproxy and Varnish managed static-delivery and load-balancing, with persistent data storage handled by MySQL.
- Performance886
- Super fast542
- Ease of use513
- In-memory cache444
- Advanced key-value cache324
- Open source194
- Easy to deploy182
- Stable164
- Free155
- Fast121
- High-Performance42
- High Availability40
- Data Structures35
- Very Scalable32
- Replication24
- Great community22
- Pub/Sub22
- "NoSQL" key-value data store19
- Hashes16
- Sets13
- Sorted Sets11
- NoSQL10
- Lists10
- Async replication9
- BSD licensed9
- Bitmaps8
- Integrates super easy with Sidekiq for Rails background8
- Keys with a limited time-to-live7
- Open Source7
- Lua scripting6
- Strings6
- Awesomeness for Free5
- Hyperloglogs5
- Transactions4
- Outstanding performance4
- Runs server side LUA4
- LRU eviction of keys4
- Feature Rich4
- Written in ANSI C4
- Networked4
- Data structure server3
- Performance & ease of use3
- Dont save data if no subscribers are found2
- Automatic failover2
- Easy to use2
- Temporarily kept on disk2
- Scalable2
- Existing Laravel Integration2
- Channels concept2
- Object [key/value] size each 500 MB2
- Simple2
- Cannot query objects directly15
- No secondary indexes for non-numeric data types3
- No WAL1
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We use MongoDB as our primary #datastore. Mongo's approach to replica sets enables some fantastic patterns for operations like maintenance, backups, and #ETL.
As we pull #microservices from our #monolith, we are taking the opportunity to build them with their own datastores using PostgreSQL. We also use Redis to cache data we’d never store permanently, and to rate-limit our requests to partners’ APIs (like GitHub).
When we’re dealing with large blobs of immutable data (logs, artifacts, and test results), we store them in Amazon S3. We handle any side-effects of S3’s eventual consistency model within our own code. This ensures that we deal with user requests correctly while writes are in process.
I'm working as one of the engineering leads in RunaHR. As our platform is a Saas, we thought It'd be good to have an API (We chose Ruby and Rails for this) and a SPA (built with React and Redux ) connected. We started the SPA with Create React App since It's pretty easy to start.
We use Jest as the testing framework and react-testing-library to test React components. In Rails we make tests using RSpec.
Our main database is PostgreSQL, but we also use MongoDB to store some type of data. We started to use Redis for cache and other time sensitive operations.
We have a couple of extra projects: One is an Employee app built with React Native and the other is an internal back office dashboard built with Next.js for the client and Python in the backend side.
Since we have different frontend apps we have found useful to have Bit to document visual components and utils in JavaScript.
- Load balancer131
- High performance102
- Very fast69
- Proxying for tcp and http58
- SSL termination55
- Open source31
- Reliable27
- Free20
- Well-Documented18
- Very popular12
- Runs health checks on backends7
- Suited for very high traffic web sites7
- Scalable6
- Ready to Docker5
- Powers many world's most visited sites4
- Simple3
- Ssl offloading2
- Work with NTLM2
- Available as a plugin for OPNsense1
- Redis1
- Becomes your single point of failure6
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Around the time of their Series A, Pinterest’s stack included Python and Django, with Tornado and Node.js as web servers. Memcached / Membase and Redis handled caching, with RabbitMQ handling queueing. Nginx, HAproxy and Varnish managed static-delivery and load-balancing, with persistent data storage handled by MySQL.
We're using Git through GitHub for public repositories and GitLab for our private repositories due to its easy to use features. Docker and Kubernetes are a must have for our highly scalable infrastructure complimented by HAProxy with Varnish in front of it. We are using a lot of npm and Visual Studio Code in our development sessions.
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- Makes the hard parts of varnish easy10
- Realtime stats10
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- Git support8
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- Qa testing6
- Test Varnish Settings in Dev & Prod5
- Kibana logs4
- Graphite out of the box3
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Nuster
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- High-performance1
- Web cache1
- Web application accelerator1
- Very Fast1
- Open Source1
- Load balancer1
- Proxying for tcp and http1
- SSL termination1
- Free1
- HTTP reverse proxy0