<html><head></head><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><div><div>On Jan 18, 2010, at 4:06 PM, Poul-Henning Kamp wrote:</div><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"><blockquote type="cite"><div>In message <<a href="mailto:02D0EC1A-D0B0-40EE-B278-B57714E54BAE@dynamine.net">02D0EC1A-D0B0-40EE-B278-B57714E54BAE@dynamine.net</a>>, "Michael S. Fis<br>cher" writes:<br><br><blockquote type="cite">But we are not discussing serving dynamic content in this thread<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">anyway. We are talking about binary files, aren't we? Yes? Blobs<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">on disk? Unless everyone is living on a different plane then me,<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">then I think that's what we're talking about.<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">For those you should be using a general purpose webserver. There's<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">no reason you can't run both side by side. And I stand by my<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">original statement about their performance relative to Varnish.<br></blockquote><br>Why would you use a general purpose webserver, if Varnish can<br>deliver 80 or 90% of your content much faster and much cheaper ?<font class="Apple-style-span" color="#000000"><font class="Apple-style-span" color="#144FAE"><br></font></font></div></blockquote><br></div><div>There's no question that Varnish is faster and that it can handle more peak requests per second than a general-purpose webserver at a near-100% cache hit rate. I'm merely contending that the small amount of added latency for a cache hit, where neither server is operating at full capacity, is not enough to significantly affect the user experience.</div><div><br></div><div>There are many competing factors that need to go into the planning process other than pure peak capacity, among them the cache hit ratio, the cost of a cache miss, and where your money is better spent: installing RAM in cache servers or in origin servers.</div><div><br></div><div>--Michael</div><br></body></html>