Varnish Cache 3.0 was officially released today, expanding the open source technology with the promise of new modularity for the next generation of web acceleration needs. Varnish is often used in deployments alongside Apache, as well as the open source ngnx web server.
“Some people look at Varnish as a way to outsource performance,” Per Buer, CEO of Varnish Software said. “For example, Ruby on Rails is not known for performance, so many of those developers outsource performance to Varnish.”
Varnish is not the first open source proxy caching server in the market either. Though Buer notes it has advantages over other options, including the open source Squid proxy server.
“In addition to performance, Varnish lets you customize in a way that others don’t,” Buer said.
For example, Buer noted that if you want every user from a particular city to see a particular page, Varnish allows the admin to set a logic policy with the configuration.
“You can make really complex policies on how sites should behave and that’s something nobody else does,” Buer said.