When to use Varnish in front or behind NGinx

[Dridi Boukelmoune]

On Fri, Aug 30, 2024 at 1:59 PM Lee Daniel <lee at caribbeannewmedia.com> wrote:
>
> Hey Guys,
>
> So happy to find this mailing list.
> I am 2-3 weeks into using Varnish Cache for the first time.
>
> I am on a Plesk Webserver with multiple domains (Mainly Drupal sites) running Centos.
> Plesk has an Nginx:80 -> Apache:7080 setup.
>
> Following Varnish documentation for 4.1.11, which is the latest version compatible with Drupal:
>
> Changed Nginx port from 80 to 8080.
> Changed Varnish default port from 6081 to 80.
> Changed my default backend to point back to Nginx on port 8080.
> So now I have, Varnish -> Nginx -> Apache
>
> I do some test with Curl -I and get some hits.
>
> Connected to my Drupal sites successfully.
>
> However, doing some research I found out that Nginx does not support ssl/tls natively.
>
> Therefore, if ssl/tls termination needed, Varnish would have to be placed behind NGinx.
>
> e.g Nginx:80 -> Varnish:6080 -> Apache:7080
>
> My job was to install Varnish on our servers to be used on specific sites for Caching purposes.
>
> I've read that Varnish first if you mainly want Caching and the full power of Varnish or Varnish behind Nginx if you want ssl termination and reduced power of Varnish Caching.
>
>
> Can someone please weigh in on this?
> Weigh in heavy if you must ��

Hi Lee,

I'm wondering why you need an Apache (I assume httpd) server in the
first place, my understanding is that there is a good deal of overlap
with nginx in terms of features. If you want varnish to be your
caching layer, then it should probably be behind nginx with no caching
in nginx itself. If you do introduce varnish, then you will likely
need something behind it to speak FastCGI with your PHP application.
It can be httpd, or you could loop back to nginx.

So the second suggestion is probably your safest bet:

nginx:443 -> varnish:6081 -> httpd:7080


Dridi