Filling the varnish cache

[Per Buer]

Hi,

On Mon, Oct 24, 2011 at 4:55 PM, Sam Davey <sam at musicmatter.co.uk> wrote:
>
> What tried and tested methods do other people use to fill their varnish cache?

It depends a bit on the usage pattern, but generally I can say that by
far the most efficient way to fill the cache is to have the users do
it. Since we do request coalescing the load on the backend servers
won't be that big while your cache is filling up. A lot of news and
portal sites achieve a high hitrate after only a couple of seconds.

So, unless your website has some very special properties, I would
recommend that you make your users "warm" the cache.

However, if you have a load balancer in front of Varnish and the load
balancer does health probes, you might consider making it poll the
front page. The front page is often heavy to generate and making sure
it is in cache before letting the hoards in might be  a good idea.

-- 
Per Buer, CEO
Phone: +47 21 98 92 61 / Mobile: +47 958 39 117 / Skype: per.buer
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