Varnish is a web application accelerator platform, which caches information for the sake of faster response times. It is sometimes referred to as an HTTP reverse proxy too and it works between a web server and its users. When a website visitor accesses a particular web page, its content is requested by the web browser, and then the server processes this browser request and delivers the needed info. If Varnish is enabled for a site, it will cache its pages on the first request and if the visitor visits a cached page for a second time, the data will be delivered by the accelerator platform and not by the web server. The boosted speed is a result of the considerably faster response time that Varnish offers as compared to any server software. Of course, this doesn’t mean that the site visitors will continue being served the very same content again and again, as any modification on any of the pages is reflected in the content that Varnish caches in its system memory.
Varnish in Web Hosting
Varnish is offered as an optional upgrade with all our web hosting. You can add it to your hosting account from the Hepsia hosting Control Panel, which is offered with all shared packages and you will get a rather intuitive interface, which will give you complete control over the data caching system. Using 1-click fast-access controls, you can restart or remove any of the instances, i.e. Varnish will no longer be activated for a certain website. You can also see an elaborate log file or erase the cache for any of the sites. When you add Varnish to your shared web hosting package, you’ll be able to select the maximum amount of memory that will be at your disposal for content caching purposes and the number of the websites that will use Varnish. You can always get more memory in increments of 32 MB and, for maximum performance, you can allocate a dedicated IP to the sites that will use Varnish. This will allow you to get the most out of your Internet sites and to have lots of satisfied users.
Varnish in Semi-dedicated Servers
All our semi-dedicated servers come with Varnish by default, so you can use the accelerator and optimize the speed of any site that you host on our semi-dedicated servers. You’ll get 64 megabytes of system memory dedicated to the Varnish accelerator at no extra cost and you will be able to enable an instance with no more than a couple of mouse clicks through the Hepsia Control Panel, which comes with the semi-dedicated server plans. If you need more memory, the latter is offered in increments of 32 megabytes in the Control Panel’s Upgrades section and it will be at your disposal instantaneously. You can also add more instances as a separate upgrade, so you can choose whether a lot of content will be cached for a single website or whether the memory will be utilized by multiple Internet sites. Hepsia will permit you to reboot or to delete any instance, to check the system log file associated with it or to clear the cached data using single-click controls. To take full advantage of Varnish, you can allocate a dedicated IP to the Internet sites which will use it.
Varnish in Dedicated Servers
If you order a dedicated server with the Hepsia Control Panel, you will obtain the Varnish data caching platform at no additional cost and you will have full control over it through an extremely time and effort saving interface – you’ll be able to start, to discontinue or to restart an instance, to check an exhaustive system log, to clear the cached content for any website and much more. Varnish will have several gigabytes of virtual memory at its disposal, so even if you own popular sites with a large number of visitors, you will notice the substantially faster site loading times and the less load on the machine. This will become a fact shortly after you begin using Varnish, since it will require a certain amount of time to cache the site content that users open. You can take full advantage of the platform’s capability if the websites that are using it use also a dedicated IP address, but since your dedicated server comes with a few IPs by default, you won’t need to pay anything on top of your monthly fee for the server itself.