[Cialug] Web caches and SSL

[Daniel A. Ramaley]

Multiple proxy layers can work. At one time i had Varnish -> Nginx -> 
Apache. I saw a 3 orders of magnitude performance improvement over 
Apache alone for the particular application (WordPress). It is more 
complicated to have multiple layers though; eventually i removed Varnish 
from my stack because Nginx alone added sufficient performance for our 
needs and each layer does add more troubleshooting overhead when 
something goes wrong.

On 2015-08-25 at 09:54:05 Matthew Nuzum wrote:
> I saw this in RH's OpenSource.com newsletter today: Why every website
> should switch to HTTPS
> http://opensource.com/business/15/8/interview-daniel-roesler-utilityap
> i?sc_cid=70160000000x3vkAAA
> 
> Last year I started switching all my sites over to SSL. A few of my
> sites were using a Varnish web cache to speed them up. Since Varnish
> doesn't terminal SSL I have been taking it out of the stack.
> 
> I miss it, though. It helped a lot, even if it did make some things
> more complicated. Are the days of using a web cache in this way gone?
> 
> I know I could use a web server to terminate SSL, then proxy to
> Varnish which would then proxy to the backend web server. This seems
> like a lot of proxying, which is why I'm not doing it. Is there an
> easier/better way that I should consider?
__
Daniel A. Ramaley  |  Network Engineer 2
Drake Technology Services (DTS) | Drake University

T: +1 515 271-4540
F: +1 515 271-1938
E: daniel.ramaley at drake.edu