RSS 2.0
I just did setup varnish on my machine to see if it makes my web server feels snapier. Facebook uses it so it must mean something... At least now I have some cool HTTP headers on all my request, not sure if it's faster or not. ab gives me pretty lame stats (like 60 request per seconds for a static page with), but maybe it was even lamer without it !
I installed it with aptitude on Ubuntu oneiric, you'll get a varnish 3.x if you do that, and a smooth install as usual. Quick note for myself (apache user). Update yourt ports.conf, and all the virtualhost port to serve on 8080 now (including 000-default.conf), then update /etc/default/varnish to serve on port 80 (it serves on 6081 by default). There is a secure telnet interface for diagnostic (on port 6082). Also, if one of your site uses Cookies you might have to set a magic option (thanks Google) by giving this flag to the varnish daemon when you start it. I think it augment the capacity of the HTTP headers (limited to 2K by default). There's a handy varnishlog tool that will let you know about errors; it's an interactive tool that you use like you'd use top.
-p http_req_hdr_len=20000 -p http_resp_hdr_len=20000 \
posted on Sat, 15 Oct 2011 under code