Varnish is a website accelerator platform, which caches information for quicker access. It’s sometimes referred to as a caching HTTP reverse proxy too and it works between a web server and an Internet browser. When a site visitor loads a particular page, its content is requested by the browser, and then the server processes this request and returns the needed information. If Varnish is activated for a given website, it will cache the pages on the very first visit and in case the visitor opens a cached page once more, the info will be delivered by the caching platform and not by the server. The increased loading speed is a result of the considerably faster response speed that Varnish offers compared with any web server software. At the same time, this does not mean that the site visitors will keep being served the exact same content over and over again, as any change on any of the web pages is reflected in the content that Varnish stores in its system memory.
Varnish in Hosting
In case you host your websites in a hosting account with us, you will be able to add Varnish with several clicks of the mouse from your hosting Control Panel. The data caching platform comes as an upgrade with all our shared packages and you can choose how many websites will use it and the total storage space that will be used for the cached content. The two upgradeable features in the Upgrades section of the Control Panel are the amount of memory and the number of instances and they aren’t linked directly to each other, so you can choose whether you want lots of memory for a single large-size website or less memory for several smaller ones. You can make use of the full potential of the Varnish platform in case the sites use a dedicated IP. Using the hosting Control Panel, you can swiftly start/restart/stop an instance, delete the cached contents individually for each site which uses the Varnish platform or see an elaborate log file.
Varnish in Semi-dedicated Servers
The Varnish content caching platform is an essential part of the default service set that you will acquire in case you choose to host your sites in a semi-dedicated server account. You can enable it for any of your sites through our cutting-edge Hepsia Control Panel. The default amount of memory that Varnish can use to cache content is 64 MB, but if you decide that you want more, you can upgrade this memory from the Upgrades section of the Control Panel. You can also upgrade the Varnish instances, in other words – the number of the sites that can use this platform simultaneously. Since these two features aren’t tied to each other, you can use several sites with the default amount of memory or you can add more memory in increments of 32 MB and use all of it for a single website. The Varnish caching platform works best when you set a dedicated IP for the Internet sites that utilize its power. Hepsia will give you a simple means of rebooting any instance. On top of that, you will be able to delete the cached data with only one single click.