Caching with Varnish

Varnish is a HTTP caching proxy server which can be used to radically improve the response time of your website.

Sulu is bundled with a “soft” caching proxy, the Symfony HttpCache, but using Varnish is a more optimal solution for a large website, especially if it has lots of traffic.

In addition to being twice as fast as the default caching implementation it also supports better cache invalidation, which means that your website will appear more up-to-date.

Note

“Twice as fast” is relative. The default cache implementation can respond in 0.02s compared to varnishes 0.01s - the difference here is imperceptible - but varnish will scale better and supports better invalidation.

This tutorial will walk you through the process of setting up Varnish on your own server and configuring it to work with Sulu.

This tutorial assumes that:

  • You are using the Apache2 web server
  • You are running Ubuntu or Debian

The steps should apply equally to other variants.

Install Varnish

On Ubuntu/Debian install Varnish as follows:

apt-get install varnish

This should install and start the Varnish daemon.

Server Configurations

Web Server

Note

You may skip this section if you intend to run varnish in a development environment and do not want to change the default port of your web server.

For a caching server to serve pages to your users, it will need to “pretend” to be the web server. Web servers listen to requests on port 80 by default. We must make Varnish listen for connections on port 80 and make the web server listen on a different port.

Note

We are going to make the web server listen on port 8090 but there is nothing special about this port and it can be anything as long as it does not conflict with any existing services.

Change the Listen directive in /etc/apache2/ports.conf to Listen 8090:

# /etc/apache2/ports.conf
# ...
Listen 8090

And change any and all virtual hosts to now listen on 8090:

# /etc/apache2/conf.d/sites-available/sulu.conf
# ...
<VirtualHost \*:8090>
    # ...
</VirtualHost>

Now you will need to configure varnish.

Varnish

Note

Skip this section if you are in a development environment and prefer to access varnish via. its default port (explained later).

By default Varnish will listen for connections on port 6081 (at least on Debian systems). If you are running a production system you will need to change this to the default HTTP port, port 80.

Verify which port Varnish is listening to:

$ ps ax | grep varnish
6585 ?        SLs    0:00 varnishd -f /home/daniel/.varnish/sulu.vcl -s malloc,1G -T 127.0.0.1:2000 -a 0.0.0.0:6081
6609 ?        Sl     0:07 varnishd -f /home/daniel/.varnish/sulu.vcl -s malloc,1G -T 127.0.0.1:2000 -a 0.0.0.0:6081

The -a option indicates where Varnish is listening - it is listening on port 8083, which is incorrect.

Under Debiae/Ubuntu we can change the initialization script:

# /etc/default/varnish

# ...
DAEMON_OPTS="-a :80 \
             -T localhost:6082 \
             -f /etc/varnish/default.vcl \
             -S /etc/varnish/secret \
             -s malloc,256m

Now restart the daemon:

/etc/init.d/varnishd restart

Varnish Configuration

The following will add full caching support for Sulu:

# /etc/varnish/default.vcl
vcl 4.0;

acl invalidators {
    "localhost";
}

backend default {
    .host = "127.0.0.1";
    .port = "8090";
}

sub vcl_recv {
    if (req.method == "PURGE") {
        if (!client.ip ~ invalidators) {
            return (synth(405, "Not allowed"));
        }
        return (purge);
    }

    if (req.method == "BAN") {
        if (!client.ip ~ invalidators) {
            return (synth(405, "Not allowed"));
        }


        if (req.http.x-cache-tags) {
            ban("obj.http.x-host ~ " + req.http.x-host
                + " && obj.http.x-url ~ " + req.http.x-url
                + " && obj.http.content-type ~ " + req.http.x-content-type
                + " && obj.http.x-cache-tags ~ " + req.http.x-cache-tags
            );
        } else {
            ban("obj.http.x-host ~ " + req.http.x-host
                + " && obj.http.x-url ~ " + req.http.x-url
                + " && obj.http.content-type ~ " + req.http.x-content-type
            );
        }

        return (synth(200, "Banned"));
    }
}

sub vcl_backend_response {
    # Set ban-lurker friendly custom headers
    set beresp.http.x-url = bereq.url;
    set beresp.http.x-host = bereq.http.host;
}

sub vcl_deliver {

    if (!resp.http.x-cache-debug) {
        unset resp.http.x-url;
        unset resp.http.x-host;
    }

    if (obj.hits > 0) {
        set resp.http.X-Cache = "HIT";
    } else {
        set resp.http.X-Cache = "MISS";
    }
}

Restart Varnish:

$ /etc/init.d/varnish restart

And now have a look at the headers on your website:

$ curl -I mywebsite.com
HTTP/1.1 200 OK
# ...
Via: 1.1 varnish
# ...

If you see the above Via header, then all is good and your are ready to go forward.

Configuring Sulu Invalidation

You will first need to ensure that the default “soft” cache has been disabled.

Open the website front controller (app/website.php in the standard edition) and ensure that the following lines are commented out:

// Uncomment this line if you want to use the "symfony" http
// caching strategy. See
// if (SYMFONY_ENV != 'dev') {
//    require_once __DIR__ . '/../app/WebsiteCache.php';
//    $kernel = new WebsiteCache($kernel);
//}

Warning

If you do not comment out the above lines caching will not work as you will be using 2 caches.

Now edit app/config.yml and change the proxy client from symfony to varnish and set the address of your varnish server (assuming that your Varnish server is on localhost and listening on port 80):

sulu_http_cache:
    # ...
    proxy_client:
        varnish:
            enabled: true
            servers: [ 'localhost:80' ]

Now have another look at the headers from your website:

$ curl -I sulu.lo
HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Host: sulu.lo:6081
Cache-Control: max-age=1000, public, s-maxage=1000
Date: Fri, 16 Jan 2015 13:46:58 GMT
Content-Type: text/html; charset=UTF-8
X-Reverse-Proxy-TTL: 2400
X-Sulu-Handlers: public, debug
X-Sulu-Proxy-Client: varnish
X-Sulu-Structure-Type: AnimalsPageCache
X-Sulu-Structure-UUID: 26f73515-253b-4f98-a227-8811b830735d
X-Sulu-Page-TTL: 2400
X-Debug-Token: f05a02
X-Debug-Token-Link: /_profiler/f05a02
X-Varnish: 131202 32868
Age: 88
Via: 1.1 varnish-v4
X-Cache: HIT
Content-Length: 9240
Connection: keep-alive

Note

If you chose not to make Varnish listen on port 80, then use sulu.lo:6081 instead.

The meaning of all these headers will be explained in the HttpCacheBundle document. But for now you should see (providing your are in dev mode) the X-Sulu-Proxy-Client has a value of varnish.

Optimal configuration

To get the most out of the Varnish cache you should enable the tags cache handler and disable the paths handler.

The tags handler will automatically ensure that any changes you make in the admin interface are immediately available on your website.

See the HttpCacheBundle document for more information.

The following is a full configuration example:

sulu_http_cache:
    handlers:
        tags:
            enabled: true
        public:
            max_age: 604800 # one week
            shared_max_age: 604800 # one week
            use_page_ttl: true
            enabled: true
        debug:
            enabled: '%kernel.debug%'
    proxy_client:
        varnish:
            enabled: true
            servers: [ '127.0.0.1:80' ]