Varnish Book 1

The Varnish Book
Request
Restart
Frontend (From Client) Workthread

vcl_recv
lookup
vcl_hash
pass
hit
vcl_hit
miss
hit-for-pass
vcl_miss
vcl_pipe
purge
busy
vcl_purge
vcl_pass
Backend (To Server) Workthread

vcl_backend_fetch
if (conditions(beresp))
true
false
vcl_backend_response
vcl_backend_error
cacheable?
hit-for-pass yes
do not cache
vcl_deliver
cache
vcl_synth
Done
waiting
RESTART
Request received
cnt_restart:
ESI_REQ
ok?
max_restarts?
cnt_recv:
vcl_recv{}
hash
purge
req.*
pass
pipe
SYNTH
synth
cnt_pipe:
cnt_recv:
vcl_hash{}
filter req.*->bereq.*
req.*
lookup
vcl_pipe{}
pipe
cnt_lookup:
miss?
(waitinglist)
hit-for-pass?
busy?
vcl_purge{}
synth
req.*
restart
cnt_lookup:
req.*
vcl_hit{}
deliver
fetch
obj.*
restart
synth
pass
cnt_miss:
vcl_miss{}
fetch
synth
req.*
restart
pass
parallel
if obj expired
cnt_pass:
vcl_pass{}
fetch
BGFETCH
FETCH
Filter obj.->resp.
restart
req.*
resp.*
deliver
req.*
restart
FETCH_FAIL
cnt_deliver:
vcl_deliver{}
synth
see backend graph
FETCH_DONE
synth
cnt_purge:
hash lookup
hit?
req.*
bereq.*
synth
SYNTH
cnt_synth:
vcl_synth{}
deliver
req.*
resp.*
stream?
body
restart
V1D_Deliver
DONE
send bereq,
copy bytes until close
FETCH
BGFETCH
RETRY
vbf_stp_startfetch:
vcl_backend_fetch{}
abandon
bereq.*
fetch
send bereq,
read beresp (headers)
vbf_stp_startfetch:
bereq.*
vcl_backend_response{}
retry
max?
ok?
vbf_stp_error:
error
abandon
vcl_backend_error{}
retry
max?
ok?
bereq.*
beresp.*
deliver
RETRY
abandon
beresp.*
deliver
304?
other?
vbf_stp_condfetch:
vbf_stp_fetch:
copy obj attr
setup VFPs
steal body
fetch
fetch_fail?
ok?
"backend synth"
FETCH_FAIL
RETRY
FETCH_DONE
fetch_fail?
error?
ok?
Authors:
Copyright:
Versions:
Date:
License:
Contact:
Web:
Source:
Francisco Velzquez (Varnish Software), Kristian Lyngstl, Tollef Fog Heen,

Jrme Renard
Varnish Software AS 2010-2015, Redpill Linpro AS 2008-2009
Documentation version-4.7-277-ge7c6276 / Tested for Varnish plus-4.0.3r1
2015-07-14
The
material
is
available
under
a
CC-BY-NC-SA
license.
See
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/ for the full license. For
questions regarding what we mean by non-commercial, please contact
training@varnish-software.com.
For any questions regarding this training material, please contact
training@varnish-software.com.
http://www.varnish-software.com/book/
http://github.com/varnish/Varnish-Book/
Contents
1 Introduction
17
1.1 What is Varnish?
18
1.2 Varnish Cache and Varnish Plus
19
1.3 Varnish Software
21
1.4 What Is New in Varnish 4
22
2 Design Principles
24
2.1 How objects are stored
26
2.2 Object Lifetime
27
3 Getting Started
28
3.1 Varnish Distribution
29
3.2 Install Varnish and Apache as Backend
31
3.2.1 Install Apache
32
3.2.2 Install Varnish
33
3.2.3 Configure Varnish
35
3.2.4 Installation Test
37
3.3 The Management Interface varnishadm
38
3.4 More About Varnish Configuration
40
3.5 Command Line Configuration
42
3.6 Defining a Backend in VCL
44
3.7 Exercise: Use the administration interface to learn, review and set Varnish
parameters
45
3.8 Exercise: Fetch data through Varnish
46
4 Examining Varnish Server's Output
47
4.1 Log Data Tools
48
4.2 Log Layout
49
4.3 Transactions
50
4.3.1 Transaction Groups
51
4.3.2 Example of Transaction Grouping with varnishlog
52
4.4 Query Language
53
4.5 Exercise
55
4.6 varnishstat
56
4.6.1 Notable Counters

4.7 Exercise: Try varnishstat and varnishlog together
5 Tuning
5.1 Varnish Architecture
60
62
63
64
5.1.1 The Parent Process: The Manager
66
5.1.2 The Child Process: The Cacher
67
5.1.3 VCL Compilation
68
5.2 Storage Backends
69
5.3 The SHared Memory Log (SHMLOG)
70
5.4 Tunable Parameters
71
5.5 Varnish Tuner
73
5.5.1 Varnish Tuner Persistence
74
5.5.2 Install Varnish Tuner
75
5.6 Threading Model
76
5.7 Threading parameters
77
5.7.1 Details of Threading Parameters
79
5.7.2 Number of Threads
80
5.7.3 Timing Thread Growth
81
5.8 System Parameters
82
5.9 Timers
83
5.10 Exercise: Tune first_byte_timeout
85
5.11 Exercise: Configure threading
86
6 HTTP
87
6.1 Protocol basics
88
6.2 Requests
89
6.3 Request example
90
6.4 Response
91
6.5 Response example
92
6.6 HTTP request/response control flow
93
6.7 Statelessness and idempotence
94
6.8 Cache related headers
95
6.9 Exercise: Test various Cache headers
96
6.10 Expires
97
6.11 Cache-Control
98
6.12 Last-Modified
100
6.13 If-Modified-Since
101
6.14 If-None-Match
102
6.15 Etag
103
6.16 Pragma
104
6.17 Vary
105
6.18 Age
106
6.19 Header availability summary
107
6.20 Cache-hit and misses
108
6.21 Exercise: Use article.php to test Age
109
7 VCL Basics
7.1 Varnish Finite State Machine
7.1.1 Waiting State
110
111
113
7.2 Detailed Varnish Request Flow for the Client Worker Thread
114
7.3 The VCL Finite State Machine
116
7.4 VCL Syntax
117
7.5 VCL built-in functions
118
7.6 Legal Return Actions
119
7.7 Variables in VCL subroutines
120
7.8 Summary of VCL
122
8 VCL Built-in Subroutines

8.1 VCL vcl_recv
123
124
8.1.1 Built-in: vcl_recv
126
8.1.2 Example: Basic Device Detection
127
8.1.3 Exercise: Rewrite URLs and Host headers
128
8.1.4 Solution: Rewrite URLs and Host headers
130
8.2 VCL vcl_pass
131
8.2.1 hit-for-pass
132
8.3 VCL vcl_backend_fetch and vcl_backend_response
133
8.3.1 vcl_backend_response
135
8.3.2 The Initial Value of beresp.ttl
136
8.3.3 Example: Setting TTL of .jpg URLs to 60 seconds
138
8.3.4 Example: Cache .jpg for 60 seconds only if s-maxage is not present
139
8.3.5 Exercise: Avoid caching a page
140
8.3.6 Solution: Avoid caching a page
141
8.3.7 Exercise: Either use s-maxage or set TTL by file type
142
8.3.8 Solution: Either use s-maxage or set ttl by file type
143
8.4 VCL vcl_hash
144
8.5 VCL vcl_hit
145
8.6 VCL vcl_miss
146
8.7 VCL vcl_deliver
147
8.8 VCL vcl_synth
148
8.8.1 Example: Redirecting requests with vcl_synth

8.9 Exercise: Modify the HTTP response header fields
8.9.1 Solution: Modify the HTTP response header fields
8.10 Exercise: Change the error message
8.10.1 Solution: Change the error message
9 Cache Invalidation
150
151
152
153
154
155
9.1 HTTP PURGE
157
9.1.1 VCL vcl_purge
158
9.1.2 Example: PURGE
159
9.1.3 Exercise: PURGE an article from the backend
160
9.1.4 Solution: PURGE an article from the backend
161
9.2 PURGE with restart return action
164
9.3 Banning
166
9.3.1 Lurker-Friendly Bans

9.4 Exercise: Write a VCL program using purge and ban
9.4.1 Solution: Write a VCL program using purge and ban
169
171
172
9.5 Force Cache Misses
173
9.6 Hashtwo (Varnish Software Implementation of Surrogate Keys)
174
9.6.1 VCL example using Hashtwo

9.7 Purge vs. Bans vs. Hashtwo vs. Cache Misses
175
177
10 Saving a Request
179
10.1 Directors
180
10.1.1 Random Directors
182
10.2 Health Checks
183
10.3 Grace Mode
185
10.3.1 Time-line example
187
10.3.2 When can grace happen
188
10.3.3 Exercise: Grace
189
10.4 retry return action
190
10.5 Tune Backend Properties
191
10.6 Access Control Lists (ACLs)
192
11 Content Composition
193
11.1 A typical website
194
11.2 Cookies
195
11.2.1 Vary and Cookies
196
11.2.2 Best Practices for Cookies
197
11.2.3 Exercise: Compare Vary and hash_data
198
11.3 Edge Side Includes
199
11.3.1 Basic ESI usage
200
11.3.2 Example: Using ESI
201
11.3.3 Exercise: Enable ESI and Cookies
202
11.3.4 Testing ESI without Varnish
203
11.4 Masquerading AJAX requests

11.4.1 Exercise: write a VCL that masquerades XHR calls
204
205
11.4.2 Solution: write a VCL that masquerades XHR calls

12 Varnish Plus Software Components
12.1 Varnish Administration Console (VAC)
206
207
208
12.1.1 Overview Page of the Varnish Administration Console
209
12.1.2 Configuration Page of the Varnish Administration Console
210
12.1.3 Banning Page of the Varnish Administration Console
211
12.2 Varnish Custom Statistics (VCS)
212
12.2.1 VCS Data Model
214
12.2.2 VCS API
217
12.2.3 Screenshots of GUI
219
12.3 Varnish High Availability (VHA)
220
12.4 SSL/TLS Support
221
13 Appendix A: Resources
222
14 Appendix B: Varnish Programs
223
14.1 varnishtop
224
14.2 varnishncsa
225
14.3 varnishhist
226
14.4 Exercise: Try the tools
227
15 Appendix C: Extra Material
228
15.1 ajax.html
229
15.2 article.php
230
15.3 cookies.php
231
15.4 esi-top.php
232
15.5 esi-user.php
233
15.6 httpheadersexample.php
235
15.7 purgearticle.php
238
15.8 test.php
239
15.9 set-cookie.php
240
15.10 VCL Migrator from Varnish 3 to Varnish 4
241
16 Appendix D: Varnish Three Letter Acronyms
242
Abstract
The Varnish Book is the training material for Varnish Plus courses. The book teaches technical staff
how to use Varnish Cache 4 and selected modules of Varnish Plus effectively.
The book explains how to get started with Varnish, and its Varnish Configuration Language (VCL).
Covered are such procedures to effectively use VCL functions, cache invalidation, and more. Also
included are Varnish utility programs such as varnishlog, and extra material.
Preface
Course for Varnish Plus
Learn specific features depending the course and your needs
Necessary Background
How to Use the Book
Acknowledgements
After finishing this course, you will be able to install and configure the Varnish server, and
write effective VCL code. The Varnish Book is designed for attendees of Varnish Plus courses.
Varnish Plus is a commercial suite by Varnish Software that offers products for scalability,
customization, monitoring, and expert support services. The engine of Varnish Plus is Varnish Cache
Plus, which is the enhanced commercial edition of Varnish Cache.
Varnish Cache Plus should not be confused with Varnish Plus, a product offering by Varnish
Software. Varnish Cache Plus is one of the software components available for Varnish Plus
customers.
Most of the presented material in this book applies to both, the open source Varnish Cache and the
commercial edition Varnish Cache Plus. Therefore, you can also refer to the Varnish Cache
documentation at https://www.varnish-cache.org/docs/4.0/.
For simplicity, the book refers to Varnish Cache or Varnish Cache Plus as Varnish when there is no
difference between them. There is more information about differences between Varnish Cache and
Varnish Cache Plus in the Varnish Cache and Varnish Plus chapter.
The goal of this book is to make you confident when using Varnish. Varnish instructors focus on your
area, needs or interest. Varnish courses are usually flexible enough to make room for it.
The instructor will cover selected material for the course you take. The System Administration
(Admin) course provides attendees with the necessary knowledge to troubleshoot and tune common
parameters of a Varnish server. The Web Developer (Webdev) course teaches how to adapt web
applications so that they work with Varnish, which guarantees a fast experience for visitors of any
website. Besides that, other courses may also be taught with this book.
Necessary Background
The Admin course requires that you:
have expertise in a shell on a Linux/UNIX machine, including editing text files and starting
daemons,
understand HTTP cache headers,
understand regular-expressions, and
be able to install the software listed below.
The Webdev course requires that you:
have expertise in a shell on a Linux/UNIX machine, including editing text files and starting
daemons,
understand HTTP cache headers,
understand regular-expressions, and
be able to install the software listed below.
You do not need background in theory or application behind Varnish to complete this course.
However, it is assumed that you have experience and expertise in basic UNIX commands, and that
you can install the following software:
Varnish Cache 4.x or Varnish Cache Plus 4.x,
Apache/2.4 or later,
HTTPie 0.8.0 or later,
PHP 5.4 or later, and
curl command line tool for transferring data with URL syntaxMore specific required skills depend on the course you take. The book starts with the installation of
Varnish and navigation of some of the common configuration files. This part is perhaps the most
UNIX-centric part of the course.
How to Use the Book

Most of the material in this book applies to both: Varnish Cache and Varnish Cache Plus. Parts
that apply only to Varnish Cache Plus are clearly stated.
Varnish caching mechanisms are different than in other caching technologies. Open your mind
and try to think different when using Varnish.
The instructor guides you through the book.
Use the manual pages and help options.
See Appendix D: Varnish Three Letter Acronyms for a list of acronyms.
The Varnish Book is designed to be used as training material under the Varnish Plus course taught
by a certified instructor. Under the course, the instructor guides you and selects the relevant
sections to learn. However, you can also use this book as self-instructional material.
There are almost always many ways to do an exercise. The solutions provided in this book or by your
instructor are not necessarily better than your own.
Varnish installs several reference manuals that are accessible through the manual page command
man. You can issue the command man -k varnish to list the manual pages that mention Varnish
in their short description. In addition, the vsl man page that explains the Varnish Shared Memory
Logging (VSL). This man page does not come out when issuing man -k varnish, because it does
not contain the word varnish in its short description.
The command man varnishd, for example, retrieves the manual page of the Varnish HTTP
accelerator daemon. Also, some commands have a help option to print the usage of the command.
For example, varnishlog -h prints the usage and options of the command with a short
description of them.
In addition, you should refer to the documentation of Varnish Cache and Varnish Cache Plus. This
documentation provides you extended details on the topics covered in this book and more. To
access to this documentation, please visit https://www.varnish-software.com/resources.
The Varnish installation described in this book uses Ubuntu Linux 14.04 LTS (trusty), therefore most
of the commands instructed in this book are for this Linux distribution. We point out some
differences on how to configure Varnish for other Linux distributions, but you should reference your
linux distribution's documentation for more details.
The book is written with different formatting conventions. Varnish Configuration Language (VCL)
code uses the monospaced font type inside boxes:
vcl 4.0;
backend default {
.host = "127.0.0.1";
.port = "8080";
}
sub vcl_recv {
# Do request header transformations here.
if (req.url ~ "/admin") {
return(pass);
}
}
The first occurrence of a new term is usually its definition, and appears in the same font as the
previous occurrence of definition in this sentence. File names are indicated like this:
/path/to/yourfile. Important notes, tips and warnings are also inside boxes, but they use the
normal bodytext font type.
Resources, and Errata

https://varnish-cache.org
https://varnish-software.com/academy
#varnish-hacking and #varnish on irc.linpro.net.
https://github.com/varnish/Varnish-Book/tree/Varnish-Book-v4
https://www.varnish-cache.org/docs/trunk/users-guide/troubleshooting.html
This book is meant to be understandable to everyone who takes a Varnish Plus course and has the
required skills. If you find something unclear, do not be shy and blame yourself, ask your instructor
for help. You can also contact the Varnish open source community at https://varnish-cache.org. To
book training, please look at https://varnish-software.com/academy.
For those interested in development, the developers arrange weekly bug washes were recent tickets
and development is discussed. This usually takes place on Mondays around 13:00 CET on the IRC
channel #varnish-hacking on irc.linpro.net.
Errata, updates and general improvements of this book are available at its repository
https://github.com/varnish/Varnish-Book/tree/Varnish-Book-v4.
Acknowledgements
In addition to the authors, the following deserve special thanks (in no particular order):
Rubn Romero
Dag Haavi Finstad
Martin Blix Grydeland
Reza Naghibi
Federico G. Schwindt
Dridi Boukelmoune
Lasse Karstensen
Per Buer
Sevan Janiyan
Kacper Wysocki
Magnus Hagander
Poul-Henning Kamp
Everyone who has participated on the training courses
Chapter 1Introduction
1 Introduction
What is Varnish?
Benefits of Varnish
Open source / Free software
Varnish Software: The company
What is Varnish Plus?
Varnish: more than a cache server
History of Varnish
Varnish Governance Board (VGB)
Page 17
Page 18
1.1 What is Varnish?
Figure 1: Reverse Proxy

Varnish is a reverse HTTP proxy, sometimes referred to as an HTTP accelerator or a web accelerator.
A reverse proxy is a proxy server that appears to clients as an ordinary server. Varnish stores files or
fragments of files in memory, allowing them to be served quickly. It is essentially a key/value store,
that usually uses the URL as a key. It is designed for modern hardware, modern operating systems
and modern work loads.
At the same time, Varnish is flexible. The Varnish Configuration Language (VCL) compiles and
executes lightning fast. VCL allows system administrators to express their wanted policy rather than
being constrained by what the Varnish developers want to cater for or could think of. Varnish has
shown itself to work well both on large (and expensive) servers and tiny appliances.
Varnish is more than a reverse HTTP proxy. Depending on the installation, Varnish can be used as:
web application firewall,
DDoS attacks defender,
load balancer,
integration point,
single sign-on gateway,
authentication and authorization policy mechanism,
quick fix for unstable backends, and
HTTP router.
Page 19
1.2 Varnish Cache and Varnish Plus

Table 1: Topics Covered in This Book and Their Availability in Varnish Cache and Varnish Plus
Topic
Varnish Cache
Varnish Plus
VCL
Yes
Yes
varnishlog
Yes
Yes
varnishadm
Yes
Yes
varnishncsa
Yes
Yes
varnishstat
Yes
Yes
varnishhist
Yes
Yes
varnishtest
Yes
Yes
varnishtop
Yes
Yes
directors
Yes
Yes
purge
Yes
Yes
ban
Yes
Yes
force cache misses
Yes
Yes
vagent2
Yes
Yes
Massive Storage Engine (MSE)
No
Yes
Varnish Administration Console (VAC)
No
Yes
Varnish Tuner
No
Yes
Hashtwo (Varnish Software

Implementation of Surrogate Keys)
No
Yes
Varnish Custom Statistics (VCS)
No
Yes
Varnish High Availability (VHA)
No
Yes
SSL/TLS Support
No
Yes
Varnish Cache is an open source project, and free software. The development process is public and
everyone can submit patches, or just take a peek at the code if there is some uncertainty on how
does Varnish Cache work. There is a community of volunteers who help each other and newcomers.
The BSD-like license used by Varnish Cache does not place significant restriction on re-use of the
code, which makes it possible to integrate Varnish Cache in virtually any solution.
Varnish Cache is developed and tested on GNU/Linux and FreeBSD. The code-base is kept as
self-contained as possible to avoid introducing out-side bugs and unneeded complexity. Therefore,
Varnish uses very few external libraries.
Page 20
Varnish Software is the company behind Varnish Cache. Varnish Software and the Varnish
community maintain a package repository of Varnish Cache for several common GNU/Linux
distributions.
Varnish Software also provides a commercial suite called Varnish Plus with software products for
scalability, customization, monitoring and expert support services. The engine of the Varnish Plus
commercial suite is the enhanced commercial edition of Varnish Cache. This edition is proprietary
and it is called Varnish Cache Plus.
Table 1 shows the components covered in this book and their availability for Varnish Cache users
and Varnish Plus customers. The covered components of Varnish Plus are described in the Varnish
Plus Software Components chapter. For more information about the complete Varnish Plus offer,
please visit https://www.varnish-software.com/what-is-varnish-plus.
At the moment of writing this book, Varnish Cache supports the operating systems and Linux
distributions listed in Table 2.
Table 2: Varnish Cache and Varnish Plus supported platforms
Varnish Cache
Varnish Plus
RedHat Enterprise Linux 5
Deprecated
Deprecated
Yes
Yes
Coming soon
Coming soon
Ubuntu Linux 12.04 LTS (precise)
Yes
Yes
Ubuntu Linux 14.04 LTS (trusty)
Yes
Yes
Debian Linux 7 (wheezy)
Yes
Yes
FreeBSD 9
Yes
No
FreeBSD 10
Yes
No
Varnish Cache and Varnish Plus support only 64-bit systems.
Note
Varnish Cache Plus should not be confused with Varnish Plus, a product offering by Varnish
Software. Varnish Cache Plus is one of the software components available for Varnish Plus
customers.
Page 21
1.3 Varnish Software

Varnish timeline:
2005: Ideas! Verdens Gang (www.vg.no, Norway's biggest newspaper) were looking for
alternative cache solutions.
2006: Work began. Redpill Linpro was in charge of project management, infrastructure and
supporting development. Poul-Henning Kamp did the majority of the actual development.
2006: Varnish 1.0 released
2009: The first Varnish User Group Meeting is held in London. Roughly a dozen people
participate from all around the world.
2010: Varnish Software is born as a spin-off to Redpill Linpro AS.
2012: The fifth Varnish User Group Meeting is held in Paris. Roughly 70 people participate on
the User-day and around 30 on the developer-day!
VG, a large Norwegian newspaper, initiated the Varnish project in cooperation with Linpro. The lead
developer of the Varnish project, Poul-Henning Kamp, is an experienced FreeBSD kernel hacker.
Poul-Henning Kamp continues to bring his wisdom to Varnish in most areas where it counts.
From 2006 throughout 2008, most of the development was sponsored by VG, API, Escenic and
Aftenposten, with project management, infrastructure and extra man-power provided by Redpill
Linpro. At the time, Redpill Linpro had roughly 140 employees mostly centered around consulting
services.
Today Varnish Software is able to fund the core development with income from service agreements,
in addition to offering development of specific features on a case-by-case basis. The interest in
Varnish continues to increase. An informal study based on the list of most popular web sites in
Norway indicates that about 75% or more of the web traffic that originates in Norway is served
through Varnish.
Varnish development is governed by the Varnish Governance Board (VGB), which thus far has not
needed to intervene. The VGB consists of an architect, a community representative and a
representative from Varnish Software.
As of December 2014, the VGB positions are filled by Poul-Henning Kamp (Architect), Rogier
Mulhuijzen (Community) and Lasse Karstensen (Varnish Software). On a day-to-day basis, there is
little need to interfere with the general flow of development.
Page 22
1.4 What Is New in Varnish 4

Version statement vcl 4.0;
req.request is now req.method
vcl_fetch is now vcl_backend_response
Directors have been moved to the vmod_directors
Hash directors as a client directors
vcl_error is now vcl_backend_error
error()
is
now
synth(),
return (synth(999, "Response"));
and
you
must
explicitly
return
it:
Synthetic responses in vcl_synth

Setting headers on synthetic response bodies made in vcl_synth
resp.http instead of obj.http.
are now done on
obj.* in vcl_error replaced by beresp.* in vcl_backend_error

hit_for_pass objects are created using beresp.uncacheable
req.* not available in vcl_backend_response
bereq.* in vcl_backend_response
vcl_* prefix reserved for builtin subroutines
req.backend.healthy replaced by std.healthy(req.backend_hint)
client.port
and
server.port
std.port(server.ip)
replaced
by
std.port(client.ip)
and
Cache invalidation with purges is now done via return(purge) in vcl_recv

obj.* is now read-only
obj.last_use is retired
vcl_recv must now return hash instead of lookup
vcl_hash must now return lookup instead of hash
vcl_pass must now return fetch instead of pass
restart in the backend is now retry, this is now called return(retry), and jumps back up
to vcl_backend_fetch
default VCL is not called builtin VCL
The builtin VCL now honors Cache-Control: no-cache (and friends) to indicate uncacheable
content from the backend
remove keyword replaced by unset
X-Forwarded-For is now set before vcl_recv
Page 23
session_linger has been renamed to timeout_linger and it is in seconds now (previously

was milliseconds)
sess_timeout is renamed to timeout_idle
Increasing sess_workspace is not longer necessary, you may need to increase either
workspace_backend or workspace_client
thread_pool_purge_delay
seconds now
is renamed to thread_pool_destroy_delay
and it is in
thread_pool_add_delay and thread_pool_fail_delay are in seconds now

New parameter vcc_allow_inline_c to disable inline C in your VCL
New query language to filter logs: -m option replaced by -q
The above list tries to summarize the most important changes from Varnish Cache 3 to Varnish
Cache
4.
For
more
information,
please
visit:
https://www.varnish-cache.org/docs/trunk/whats-new/upgrading.html
If you want to migrate your VCL code from Varnish 3 to Varnish 4, you may be interested in looking
at the varnish3to4 script. See the VCL Migrator from Varnish 3 to Varnish 4 section for more
information.
Page 24
Chapter 2Design Principles
2 Design Principles
Varnish is designed to:
Solve real problems
Run on modern hardware (64-bit multi-core architectures)
Work with the kernel, not against it
Translate Varnish Configuration Language (VCL) to C programming language
Be extendible via Varnish Modules (VMODs)
Reduce lock-contention via its workspace-oriented shared memory model
The focus of Varnish has always been performance and flexibility. Varnish is designed for hardware
that you buy today, not the hardware you bought 15 years ago. This is a trade-off to gain a simpler
design and focus resources on modern hardware. Varnish is designed to run on 64-bit architectures
and scales almost proportional to the number of CPU cores you have available. Though CPU-power
is rarely a problem.
32-bit systems, in comparison to 64-bit systems, allow you to allocate less amount of virtual memory
space and less number of threads. The theoretical maximum space depends on the operating
system (OS) kernel, but 32-bit systems usually are bounded to 4GB. You may get, however, about
3GB because the OS reserves some space for the kernel.
Varnish uses a workspace-oriented memory-model instead of allocating the exact amount of space it
needs at run-time. Varnish does not manage its allocated memory, but it delegates this task to the
OS because the kernel can normally do this task better than a user-space program.
Event filters and notifications facilities such as epoll and kqueue are advanced features of the OS
that are designed for high-performance services like Varnish. By using these, Varnish can move a lot
of the complexity into the OS kernel which is also better positioned to decide which threads are
ready to execute and when.
In addition, Varnish uses a configuration language (VCL) that is translated to C programming
language code. This code is compiled with a standard C compiler and then dynamically linked
directly into Varnish at run-time. This has several advantages. The most practical is the freedom you
get as system administrator.
You can use VCL to decide how you want to interact with Varnish, instead of having a developer
trying to predict every possible caching scenario. The fact that VCL is translated to C code, gives
Varnish a very high performance. You can also by-pass the process of code translation and write raw
C code, this is called in-line C in VCL. In short: VCL allows you to specify exactly how to use and
combine the features of Varnish.
Varnish allows integration of Varnish Modules or simply VMODs. These modules let you extend the
functionality of VCL by pulling in custom-written features. Some examples include non-standard
header manipulation, access to memcached or complex normalization of headers.
The shared memory log (SHMLOG) allows Varnish to log large amounts of information at almost no
cost by having other applications parse the data and extract the useful bits. This design and other
mechanisms decrease lock-contention in the heavily threaded environment of Varnish.
Page 25
To summarize: Varnish is designed to run on modern hardware under real work-loads and to solve
real problems. Varnish does not cater to the "I want to make Varnish run on my 486 just
because"-crowd. If it does work on your 486, then that's fine, but that's not where you will see our
focus. Nor will you see us sacrifice performance or simplicity for the sake of niche use-cases that can
easily be solved by other means -- like using a 64-bit OS.
Page 26
2.1 How objects are stored

Objects in Varnish are stored in memory and addressed by hash keys
You can control the hashing
Multiple objects can have the same hash key
Varnish has a key/value store in its core. Objects are stored in memory and references to these
objects are kept in a hash tree.
A rather unique feature of Varnish is that it allows you to control the input of the hashing algorithm.
The key is by default made out of the HTTP Host header and the URL, which is sufficient and
recommended for typical cases. However, you are able to create the key from something else. For
example, you can use cookies or the user-agent of a client request to create a hash key.
HTTP specifies that multiple objects can be served from the same URL, depending on the
preferences of the client. For instance, content in gzip format is sent only to clients that indicate gzip
support. Varnish stores various objects under one key. Upon a client request, Varnish selects the
object that matches the client preferences.
Page 27
2.2 Object Lifetime
Figure 2: Object Lifetime

Figure 2 shows the lifetime of cached objects. A cached object has an origin timestamp t_origin
and three duration attributes: 1) TTL, 2) grace, and 3) keep. t_origin is the time when an object
was created in the backend. An object lives in cache until TTL + grace + keep elapses. After that
time, the object is removed by the Varnish daemon.
In a timeline, objects within the time-to-live TTL are considered fresh objects. Stale objects are those
within the time period TTL and grace. Objects within t_origin and keep are used when applying
conditions with the HTTP header If-Modified-Since.
The VCL vcl_backend_fetch and vcl_backend_response section explains how Varnish handles
backend responses and how these duration attributes affect subsequent actions.
Page 28
Chapter 3Getting Started
3 Getting Started
In this chapter, you will:
learn about the Varnish distribution,
install Varnish and Apache,
configure Varnish to use Apache as backend, and
cover basic configuration.
Most of the commands you will type in this course require root privileges. You can get temporary
root privileges by typing sudo <command>, or permanent root privileges by typing sudo -i.
In Varnish terminology, a backend server is whatever server Varnish talks to fetch content. This can
be any sort of service as long as it understands HTTP. Most of the time, Varnish talks to a web server
or an application frontend server. In this book, we use backend, web server or application frontend
server interchangeably.
Page 29
3.1 Varnish Distribution

Utility programs part of the Varnish distribution:
varnishd
varnishadm
varnishlog
varnishstat
and more
The Varnish distribution includes several utility programs that you will use in this course. You will
learn how to use this programs as you progress, but it is useful to have a brief introduction about
them before we start.
The central block of Varnish is the Varnish daemon varnishd. This daemon accepts HTTP requests
from clients, sends requests to a backend and caches the returned objects. varnishd is further
explained in the Varnish Architecture section.
varnishadm controls a running Varnish instance. The varnishadm utility establishes a command
line interface (CLI) connection to varnishd. This utility is the only one that may affect a running
instance of Varnish. You can use varnishadm to:
start and stop varnishd,
change configuration parameters,
reload the Varnish Configuration Language (VCL),
view the most up-to-date documentation for parameters, and
more.
The Management Interface varnishadm section explains in more detail this utility.
The Varnish log provides large amounts of information, thus it is usually necessary to filter it. For
example, "show me only what matches X". varnishlog does precisely that. You will learn more
about varnishlog in the Examining Varnish Server's Output chapter.
varnishstat is used to access global counters. It provides overall statistics, e.g the number of total
requests, number of objects, and more. varnishstat is particularly useful when using it together
with varnishlog to analyze your Varnish installation. The varnishstat section explains in detail this
utility.
In addition, there are other utility programs such as varnishncsa, varnishtop and varnishhist.
Appendix B: Varnish Programs explains them.
Note
There is a delay in the log process, but usually not noticeable.
Page 30
Page 31
3.2 Install Varnish and Apache as Backend

Use packages provided by
varnish-software.com for Varnish Cache Plus
varnish-cache.org for Varnish Cache
Table 3: Different Locations of the Varnish Configuration File
SysV
SysV
systemd
systemd
Ubuntu/Debian
RHEL/CentOS
Ubuntu/Debian
Fedora/RHEL
7+/CentOS 7+
/etc/default/varnish
/etc/sysconfig/varnish
/etc/systemd/system/va
rnish.service [1]
/etc/varnish/varnish.par
ams
/etc/default/varnishlog
[2]
rnishlog.service [1]
[3]
/etc/default/varnishncsa
[2]
rnishncsa.service [1]
[3]
[1] The file does not exist by default. Copy it from /lib/systemd/system/ and edit it.
[2]
There
is
no
configuration
file.
chkconfig varnishlog/varnishncsa on/off instead.
Use
the
[3]
There
is
no
configuration
file.
Use
the
systemctl start/stop/enable/disable/ varnishlog/varnishncsa instead.
command
command
Table 4: Varnish and Apache Configuration

Server
Result
Configuration file
Varnish
Listens on port 80
/etc/default/varnish *
Varnish
Uses Apache as backend on

localhost:8080
/etc/varnish/default.vcl
Apache
Listens on port 8080
/etc/apache2/ports.conf * and
/etc/apache2/sites-enabled/000-default *
* These files are for a SysV Ubuntu/Debian configuration.

The configuration file is used to give parameters and command line arguments to the Varnish
daemon. This file also specifies the location of the VCL file. Modifications to this file require to run
service varnish restart for the changes to take effect.
The location of the Varnish configuration file depends on the operating system and whether it uses
the init system of SysV, or systemd. Table 3 shows the locations for each system installation.
To install packages on Ubuntu and Debian, use the command apt-get install <package>, e.g.,
apt-get install varnish. For Red Hat, use yum install <package>.
Page 32
3.2.1 Install Apache

To install Apache in Ubuntu, type the command: apt-get install apache2. Install the HTTPie
utility with the command: apt-get install httpie. HTTPie allows you to issue arbitrary HTTP
requests in the terminal. Next:
1. Verify that Apache works by typing http -h localhost. You should see a 200 OK response
from Apache.
2. Change
Apache's
port
from
80
/etc/apache2/sites-enabled/000-default.conf.
to
8080
in
/etc/apache2/ports.conf
3. Restart Apache: service apache2 restart.

4. Verify that Apache still works by typing http -h localhost:8080.
and
Page 33
3.2.2 Install Varnish

To use the varnish-software.com repository and install Varnish Cache Plus 4 on Ubuntu 14.04
trusty do the following as root:
#. apt-get install apt-transport-https
#. apt-get install curl
#. curl https://<username>:<password>@repo.varnish-software.com/GPG-key.txt \
| apt-key add Add
the
repositories
for
Varnish
Cache
/etc/apt/sources.list.d/varnish-4.0-plus.list:
Plus
and
VMODs
in
# Remember to replace DISTRO and RELEASE with what applies to your system.
# distro=(debian|ubuntu), RELEASE=(precise|trusty|wheezy|jessie)
# Varnish Cache Plus 4.0 and VMODs
deb https://<username>:<password>@repo.varnish-software.com/DISTRO RELEASE \
varnish-4.0-plus
# non-free contains VAC, VCS, Varnish Tuner and proprietary VMODs.
deb https://<username>:<password>@repo.varnish-software.com/DISTRO RELEASE \
non-free
Then:
apt-get update
apt-get install varnish-plus
All software related to Varnish Cache Plus including VMODs are available in RedHat and Debian
package repositories. These repositories are available on http://repo.varnish-software.com/, using
your customer specific username and password.
Varnish is already distributed in many package repositories, but those packages might contain an
outdated Varnish version. Therefore, we recommend you to use the packages provided by
varnish-software.com for Varnish Cache Plus or varnish-cache.org for Varnish Cache. Please be
advised that we only provide packages for LTS releases, not all the intermediate releases. However,
these packages might still work fine on newer releases.
To use Varnish Cache Plus repositories
/etc/yum.repos.d/varnish-4.0-plus.repo:
on
RHEL
6,
put
the
following
[varnish-4.0-plus]
name=Varnish Cache Plus
baseurl=https://<username>:<password>@repo.varnish-software.com/redhat
/varnish-4.0-plus/el$releasever
enabled=1
gpgcheck=0
in
Page 34
[varnish-admin-console]
name=Varnish Administration Console
baseurl=
https://<username>:<password>@repo.varnish-software.com/redhat
/vac/el$releasever
enabled=1
gpgcheck=0
[varnishtuner]
name=Varnish Tuner
baseurl=
https://<username>:<password>@repo.varnish-software.com/redhat
/varnishtuner/el$releasever
enabled=1
gpgcheck=0
If you want to install Varnish Cache in Ubuntu change the corresponding above lines to:
curl https://repo.varnish-cache.org/ubuntu/GPG-key.txt | apt-key add echo "deb https://repo.varnish-cache.org/ubuntu/ trusty varnish-4.0" >> \
/etc/apt/sources.list.d/varnish-cache.list
apt-get install varnish
Change the Linux distribution and Varnish Cache release in the needed lines.
Page 35
3.2.3 Configure Varnish

Configure the Varnish DAEMON_OPTS:
-a ${VARNISH_LISTEN_ADDRESS}:${VARNISH_LISTEN_PORT}
-T ${VARNISH_ADMIN_LISTEN_ADDRESS}:${VARNISH_ADMIN_LISTEN_PORT}
See Table 3 and locate the Varnish configuration file for your installation. Open and edit that file to
listen on port 80 and have a management interface on port 1234. This is configured with the
variable DAEMON_OPTS, and options -a and -T respectively.
In order for changes in the configuration file to take effect, varnishd must be restarted. The safest
way to restart Varnish is by using service varnish restart.
The default VCL file location is /etc/varnish/default.vcl. You can change this location by
editing the configuration file. The VCL file contains your VCL and backend definitions. Edit the VCL file
to use Apache as backend:
backend default {
.host = "127.0.0.1";
.port = "8080";
}
After changing a VCL file, you can run service varnish reload. This command does not restart
varnishd, it only reloads the VCL code. The result of your configuration is resumed in Table 4.
You can get an overview over services listening on TCP ports by issuing the command
netstat -nlpt. Within the result, you should see something like:
tcp
tcp
0
0
0 0.0.0.0:80
0 127.0.0.1:1234
0.0.0.0:*
0.0.0.0:*
LISTEN
LISTEN
9223/varnishd
9221/varnishd
Note
We recommend you to disable Security-Enhanced Linux (SELinux). If you prefer otherwise,
then set the boolean varnishd_connect_any variable to 1. You can do that by executing
the command sudo setsebool varnishd_connect_any 1. Also, be aware that SELinux
defines the ports 6081 and 6082 for varnishd.
Tip
Issue the command man vcl to see all available options to define a backend.
Page 36
Tip
You can also configure Varnish via the Varnish Administration Console (VAC).
Figure 3: GUI to configure Varnish via the Varnish Administration Console (VAC).
Page 37
3.2.4 Installation Test

# http -p Hh localhost
GET / HTTP/1.1
Accept: */*
Accept-Encoding: gzip, deflate, compress
Host: localhost
User-Agent: HTTPie/0.8.0
HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Accept-Ranges: bytes
Age: 0
Connection: keep-alive
Content-Encoding: gzip
Content-Length: 3256
Content-Type: text/html
Date: Wed, 18 Mar 2015 13:55:28 GMT
ETag: "2cf6-5118f93ad6885-gzip"
Last-Modified: Wed, 18 Mar 2015 12:53:59 GMT
Server: Apache/2.4.7 (Ubuntu)
Vary: Accept-Encoding
Via: 1.1 varnish-plus-v4
X-Varnish: 32770
You can test your Varnish installation by issuing the command http -p Hh localhost. If you see
the HTTP response header field Via: 1.1 varnish-plus-v4, then your installation is correct.
Page 38
3.3 The Management Interface varnishadm

Varnish offers a management command line interface (CLI) to control a running Varnish instance.
This interface implements a list of management commands in the varnishadm utility program.
varnishadm establishes a connection to the Varnish daemon varnishd. You can use varnishadm
to:
start and stop the cacher (aka child) process
change configuration parameters without restarting Varnish
reload the Varnish Configuration Language (VCL) without restarting Varnish
view the most up-to-date documentation for parameters
You can read about other usages by issuing the help command after you connect to the
management interface (varnishadm).
To connect to the management interface, issue the command varnishadm. If there are many
Varnish instances running in one machine, specify the instance with the -n option. Keep the
following in mind when using the management interface:
1. Changes take effect on the running Varnish daemon instance without need to restart it.
2. Changes are not persistent across restarts of Varnish. If you change a parameter and you want
the change to persist after you restart Varnish, you need to store your changes in the
configuration file of the boot script. The location of the configuration file is is in Table 3
varnishadm uses a non-encrypted key stored in a secret file to authenticate and connect to a
Varnish daemon. You can now provide access to the interface on a per user basis by adjusting the
read permission on the secret file. The location of the secret file is /etc/varnish/secret by
default, but you can use the -S option to specify other location. The content of the file is a shared
secret, which is a string generated under Varnish installation.
The management interface authenticates with a challenge-response mechanism. Therefore, the
shared secret is never transmitted, but a challenge and the response to the challenge. This
authentication mechanism offers a reasonably good access control, but it does not protect the data
transmitted over the connection. Therefore, it is very important to avoid eavesdroppers like in the
man-in-the-middle attack. The simplest way to avoid eavesdroppers is to configure the management
interface listening address of varnishd to listen only on localhost (127.0.0.1). You configure this
address with the -T option of the varnishd command.
Tip
Varnish provides many on-line reference manuals. To learn more about varnishadm, issue
man varnishadm. To check the Varnish CLI manual page, issue man varnish-cli.
Page 39
Tip
You can also access the varnishadm via the Varnish Administration Console (VAC). To do
that, you just have to navigate to the CONFIGURE tab and click on the Varnish server you
want to administrate. Then, varnishadm is ready to use in a terminal emulator right in your
web browser.
Figure 4: Access to varnishadm by clicking on the Varnish server that you want to
administrate.
Figure 5: Terminal emulator in your web browser.
Page 40
3.4 More About Varnish Configuration

Table 5: Varnish Configuration Types
Configuration Type
Restart Required
Persistence at next restart
Command line options
Yes
If stored in the configuration file as part of

DAEMON_OPTS
Tunable parameters
No (if changed in
varnishadm)
If stored in the configuration file as part of

DAEMON_OPTS
Configuration in VCL
No
Yes
The location of the configuration file is in Table 3.

Table 6: How to reload Varnish
Command
Result
service varnish restart
Restarts Varnish using the operating system mechanisms.

Caches are flushed.
service varnish reload
Only reloads the VCL. Caches are not affected.
varnishadm vcl.load
<configname> <filename> and
varnishadm vcl.use
<configname>
Can be used to manually reload VCL. The service

varnish reload command does this for you
automatically.
varnishadm param.set <param>

<value>
Can be used to set parameters without restarting Varnish.
Using the service commands is recommended, safe and fast.

Command line options and tunable parameters are used to: 1) define how Varnish should work with
operating system and hardware, and 2) set default values. Configuration in VCL defines how Varnish
should interact with web servers and clients.
Almost every aspect of Varnish can be reconfigured without restarting Varnish. Notable exceptions
are: 1) allocated memory size for caching, 2) cache file location, 3) ownership (for user and group
privileges) of the Varnish daemon, and 4) the hashing algorithm.
Some parameters changes require to restart Varnish to take effect. For example, the modification of
the listening port. Other changes might not take effect immediately, but restart is not required.
Changes to cache time-to-live (TTL), for instance, take effect only after the current cached objects
expire. In this example, the value of the TTL parameter is only applicable to caches fetched after the
TTL modification.
param.show <parameter> outputs a description of parameter. The description includes when and
how modifications takes effect, and the default and current value of the parameter.
Page 41
There are other ways to reload VCL and make parameter-changes take effect, mostly using the
varnishadm
tool.
However,
using
the
service
varnish
reload
and
service varnish restart commands is a good habit.
Note
If you want to know how the service varnish-commands work, look at the script that runs
behind the scenes. The script is in /etc/init.d/varnish.
Warning
The varnish script-configuration (located under /etc/default/ or /etc/sysconfig/) is directly
sourced as a shell script. Pay close attention to any backslashes (\) and quotation marks that
might move around as you edit the DAEMON_OPTS environmental variable.
Page 42
3.5 Command Line Configuration

Relevant options for the course are:
-a <[hostname]:port>
listening address and port for client requests
-f <filename>
VCL file
-p <parameter=value>
set tunable parameters
-S <secretfile>
shared secret file for authorizing access to

the management interface
listening address and port for the
management interface
where and how to store objects
-T <hostname:port>
-s <storagetype,options>
All the options that you can pass to the varnishd binary are documented in the varnishd(1)
manual page (man varnishd). You may want to take a moment to skim over the options mentioned
above.
For Varnish to start, you must specify a backend. You can specify a backend by two means: 1) declare
it in a VCL file, or 2) use the -b to declare a backend when starting varnishd.
Though they are not strictly required, you almost always want to specify a -s to select a storage
backend, -a to make sure Varnish listens for clients on the port you expect and -T to enable a
management interface, often referred to as a telnet interface.
For both -T and -a, you do not need to specify an IP, but can use :80 to tell Varnish to listen to
port 80 on all IPs available. Make sure you do not forget the colon, as -a 80 tells Varnish to listen to
the IP with the decimal-representation "80", which is almost certainly not what you want. This is a
result of the underlying function that accepts this kind of syntax.
You can specify -p for parameters multiple times. The workflow for tuning Varnish parameters
usually is that you first try the parameter on a running Varnish through the management interface to
find the value you want. Then, you store the parameter and value in a configuration file. This file is
read every time you start Varnish.
The -S option specifies a file which contains a secret to be used for authentication. This can be used
to authenticate with varnishadm -S as long as varnishadm can read the same secret file -- or
rather the same content: The content of the file can be copied to another machine to allow
varnishadm to access the management interface remotely.
Note
Varnish requires that you specify a backend. A backend is normally specified in the VCL file.
You specify the VCL file with the -f option. However, it is possible to start Varnish without a
VCL file by specifying the backend server with the -b <hostname:port> option instead.
Since the -b option is mutually exclusive with the -f option, we use only the -f option. You
can use -b if you do not intend to specify any VCL and only have a single backend server.
Tip
Type man varnishd to see all options of the Varnish daemon.
Page 43
Page 44
3.6 Defining a Backend in VCL

/etc/varnish/default.vcl
vcl 4.0;
backend default {
.host = "localhost";
.port = "8080";
}
The above example defines a backend named default, where the name default is not special.
Varnish uses the first backend you specify as default. You can specify many backends at the same
time, but for now, we will only specify one to get started.
Tip
You can also add and edit your VCL code via the Varnish Administration Console (VAC). This
interface also allows you to administrate your VCL files.
Figure 6: GUI of Varnish Administration Console (VAC) with command line interface to edit your
VCL code.
Page 45
3.7 Exercise: Use the administration interface to learn, review

and set Varnish parameters
1. Use varnishadm to see the default value for the default_ttl parameter and what it does.
Page 46
3.8 Exercise: Fetch data through Varnish

Execute http -p hH http://localhost/ on the command line
Compare the results from multiple executions.
-p hH specifies HTTPie to print only request and response headers, but not the content. The typical
HTTP response is "200 OK" or "404 File not found". Feel free to try removing some of the options
observe the effect. For more information about the HTTPie command, type man http.
Testing Varnish with a web browser can be confusing, because web browsers have their own cache.
Therefore, it is useful to double-check web browsers requests with HTTPie.
Chapter 4Examining Varnish Server's Output
Page 47
4 Examining Varnish Server's Output

In this chapter you will learn about:
log records,
statistics out from global counters and the Varnish log,
the log layout,
transactions,
the query language, and
notable counters.
Varnish provides log data in real-time, which is accessible through Varnish tools. Varnish logs all its
information to The SHared Memory LOG (SHMLOG). This memory log is overwritten when filled-up in
circular order.
The memory log overwriting has two effects. On the one hand, there is no historic data, but on the
other hand, there is an abundance of information accessible at a very high speed. Still, you can
instruct Varnish to store logs in files.
The varnishlog and varnishncsa configuration files allow you to enable or disable log writing to
disk. Nevertheless, keep in mind that varnishlog generates large amounts of data! Table 3 in the
Install Varnish and Apache as backend section shows the location of the configuration file based on
your platform.
Varnish provides specific tools to parse the content of logs: varnishlog, varnishncsa, and
varnishstat among others. varnishlog and varnishstat are the two most common used
tools.
Tip
All utility programs to display Varnish logs have installed reference manuals. Use the man
command to retrieve their manual pages.
Page 48
4.1 Log Data Tools

Tools to display detailed log records:
varnishlog is used to access request-specific data. It provides information about specific
clients and requests.
varnishncsa displays Varnish access logs in NCSA Common log format.
Statistical tools:
varnishstat is used to access global counters.
varnishtop reads the Varnish log and presents a continuously updated list of the most
commonly occurring log entries.
varnishhist reads the Varnish log and presents a continuously updated histogram showing
the distribution of the last N requests by their processing.
If you have multiple Varnish instances on the same machine, you need to specify -n <name> both
when starting Varnish and when using the tools. This option is used to specify the instance of
varnishd, or the location of the shared memory log. All tools (including varnishadm) can also take
a -n option.
In this course, we focus on the two most important tools: varnishlog and varnishstat. Unlike all
other tools, varnishstat does not read entries from the Varnish log, but from global counters. You
can find more details about the other Varnish tools varnishncsa, varnishtop and varnishhist
in Appendix B: Varnish Programs.
Page 49
4.2 Log Layout
Figure 7: Log Layout Timeline

Varnish logs transactions chronologically as Figure 7 shows. The varnishlog tool offers
mechanisms to reorder transactions grouped by session, client- or backend-request. Next section
explains transactions and how to reorder them.
Page 50
4.3 Transactions
One transaction is one work item in Varnish.
Share a single Varnish Transaction ID (VXID) per types of transactions. Examples of transaction
types are:
Session
Client request
Backend request
Transaction reasons. Examples:
ESI request
restart
fetch
A transaction is a set of log lines that belongs together, e.g. a client request or a backend request.
The Varnish Transaction IDs (VXIDs) are applied to lots of different kinds of work items. A unique
VXID is assigned to each type of transaction. You can use the VXID when you view the log through
varnishlog.
The default is to group the log by VXID. When viewing a log for a simple cache miss, you can see the
backend request, the client request and then the session. They are displayed in the order they end.
Some people find it a bit counter intuitive that the backend request is logged before the client
request, but if you think about it makes sense.
Page 51
4.3.1 Transaction Groups

varnishlog -g <session | request | vxid | raw> groups together transactions
Transaction groups are hierarchical
Levels are equal to relationships (parents and children):
Level 1: Client request (cache miss)
Level 2: Backend request
Level 2: ESI subrequest (cache miss)
Level 3: Backend request (VCL restart)
Level 3: ESI subrequest (cache miss)
Level 2: ESI subrequest (cache hit)
When grouping transactions, there is a hierarchy structure showing which transaction initiated what.
In client request grouping mode, the various work items are logged together with their originating
client request. For example, a client request that triggers a backend request might trigger two more
ESI subrequests, which in turn might trigger yet another ESI subrequest.
All these requests together with the client response are arranged in the order they are initiated. This
arrangement is easier to grasp than when grouping by VXID. The Content Composition section
shows how to analyze the log for Edge Side Includes (ESI) transactions.
When a subrequest occurs in the log, the subrequest tells us about the relationship to its parent
request through the Link statement. This statement contains the VXID of the parent request.
varnishlog indents its output based on the level of the request, making it easier to see the level of
the current request.
Page 52
4.3.2 Example of Transaction Grouping with varnishlog
Figure 8: Example of Transaction Grouping with varnishlog

Figure 8 shows a client request in a cache miss scenario. In the figure, varnishlog returns
records grouped by request. For simplicity, we use the -i option to include only the Begin and
Link tags.
For more information about the format and content of all Varnish shared memory logging (VSL)
tags, see the VSL man page by typing man vsl. The workflow of Varnish is detailed in the VCL
Basics chapter.
To reproduce the example, issue http -p hH http://localhost/, and then the
varnishlog command as above. The -d option processes all recorded entries in Varnish log.
To learn more about the available varnishlog options, enter varnishlog -h or see the
varnishlog man page.
varnishlog accepts all options that are syntactically correct. The output, however, might be
different from your first interpretation. Therefore, you should make sure that your results make
sense.
Options -b and -c display only transactions coming from the backend and client communication
respectively. You can verify the meaning of your results by double checking the filters, and
separating your results with the -b and -c options.
Page 53
4.4 Query Language

Operates on transaction groups.
Query expression is true if it matches one or more records, false otherwise.
Supports:
string matching, e.g.: RespProtocol eq "HTTP/1.1"
regex, e.g.: ReqMethod ~ "GET|POST"
integer and float matching, e.g.: RespStatus == 200
boolean operators, e.g.: RespStatus >= 500 and RespStatus < 600
parenthesis hierarchy
negation using not
Examples of Varnish log queries:
varnishlog -q 'RespStatus < 500'
varnishlog -g request -q 'ReqURL eq "/"'
varnishlog -g request -q 'Backend ~ default'
The -q option allows you to add a query to varnishlog. Think of it as a sort of select filter for
varnishlog. It works together with the grouping so that if the query matches some part of any of
the work items in the transaction group, the whole group matches and gets displayed.
Query expressions can be combined using boolean functions. There are many output control
options, such as -i taglist. These options are output filters, they do not affect transaction matching.
Output controls are applied last.
A query expression consists of record selection criteria, and optionally an operator and a value to
match against the selected records:
<record selection criteria> <operator> <operand>
The <record selection criteria> determines what kind of records from the transaction group
the expression applies to. The syntax is:
{level}taglist:record-prefix[field]
For example:
Response time exceeds 12 second Timestamp:Process[2] > 0.5
Client requests connection closed ReqHeader:connection ~ close
ESI miss (-g request) {3+}Begin ~ Bereq
Page 54
Taglists are not case-sensitive, but we recommend you to follow the same format as declared in
man vsl.
The grouping and the query log processing all happens in the Varnish logging API. This means that
other programs using the varnishlog API automatically get grouping and query language.
Tip
man vsl-query shows you more details about query expressions. man vsl lists all taglists
and their syntax.
Page 55
4.5 Exercise
Make varnishlog only print client-requests where the ReqURL tag contains /favicon.ico.
Page 56
4.6 varnishstat
Uptime mgt:
1+23:38:08
Uptime child: 1+23:38:08
NAME
MAIN.uptime
MAIN.sess_conn
MAIN.client_req
MAIN.cache_hit
MAIN.cache_miss
MAIN.backend_conn
MAIN.backend_toolate
MAIN.backend_recycle
MAIN.fetch_length
MAIN.pools
MAIN.threads
MAIN.threads_created
MAIN.n_object
MAIN.n_objectcore
MAIN.n_objecthead
MAIN.n_backend
MAIN.n_expired
MAIN.s_sess
MAIN.s_req
MAIN.s_fetch
MAIN.s_req_hdrbytes
MAIN.s_resp_hdrbytes
MAIN.s_resp_bodybytes
MAIN.backend_req
MAIN.n_vcl
MAIN.bans
MAIN.n_gunzip
MGT.uptime
SMA.s0.c_req
SMA.s0.c_bytes
SMA.s0.c_freed
SMA.s0.g_alloc
SMA.s0.g_bytes
SMA.s0.g_space
VBE.default(127.0.0.1,,8080).bereq_hdrbytes
VBE.default(127.0.0.1,,8080).beresp_hdrbytes
VBE.default(127.0.0.1,,8080).beresp_bodybytes
Hitrate n:
avg(n):
CURRENT
171488
1055
1055
1052
3
4
3
4
4
2
200
200
1
3
4
1
2
1055
1055
3
122380
376249
3435094
4
1
1
4
171488
8
15968
11976
2
3992
268431464
630
1128
13024
CHANGE
1.00
7.98
7.98
7.98
0.00
0.00
0.00
0.00
0.00
0.00
0.00
0.00
0.00
0.00
0.00
0.00
0.00
7.98
7.98
0.00
926.07
2854.04
25993.71
0.00
0.00
0.00
0.00
1.00
0.00
0.00
0.00
0.00
0.00
0.00
0.00
0.00
0.00
10
0.9967
100
0.5686
438
0.3870
AVERAGE
AVG_10
AVG_100
AVG_1000
1.00
1.00
1.00
1.00
.
8.35
4.49
2.11
.
8.35
4.49
2.11
.
8.35
4.49
2.10
.
0.00
0.00
0.00
.
0.00
0.00
0.01
.
0.00
0.00
0.01
.
0.00
0.00
0.01
.
0.00
0.00
0.01
.
2.00
2.00
2.00
.
200.00
200.00
200.00
.
0.00
0.00
0.00
.
1.00
0.85
0.81
.
3.00
2.85
2.81
.
4.00
3.89
3.83
.
1.00
1.00
1.00
.
2.00
1.76
1.33
.
8.35
4.49
2.11
.
8.35
4.49
2.11
.
0.00
0.00
0.00
.
968.24
520.74
244.35
2.00
2982.17
1602.59
751.87
20.00
27177.59
14616.67
6858.74
.
0.00
0.00
0.01
.
0.00
0.00
0.00
.
1.00
1.00
1.00
.
0.00
0.00
0.01
1.00
1.00
1.00
1.00
.
0.00
0.01
0.01
.
0.01
18.98
27.33
.
0.00
12.17
18.56
.
2.00
1.70
1.62
.
3991.87
3398.82
3235.53
.
268431464.13 268432057.18 268432220.47
.
0.00
0.70
1.13
.
0.00
1.34
1.93
.
0.01
15.48
22.29
MAIN.cache_hit
Cache hits:
Count of cache hits. A cache hit indicates that an object has been delivered to a client without fetching it from a
backend server.
INFO
Page 57
Table 7: Columns displayed in central area of varnishstat

Column
Description
Name
The name of the counter
Current
The current value of the counter.
Change
The average per second change over the last update interval.
Average
The average value of this counter over the runtime of the Varnish daemon, or a
period if the counter can't be averaged.
Avg_10
The moving average over the last 10 update intervals.
Avg_100
Avg_1000
varnishstat looks only at counters. These counters are easily found in the SHMLOG, and are
typically polled at reasonable interval to give the impression of real-time updates. Counters, unlike
the rest of the log, are not directly mapped to a single request, but represent how many times a
specific action has occurred since Varnish started.
varnishstat gives a good representation of the general health of Varnish. Unlike all other tools,
varnishstat does not read log entries, but counters that Varnish updates in real-time. It can be
used to determine your request rate, memory usage, thread usage, number of failed backend
connections, and more. varnishstat gives you information just about anything that is not related
to a specific request.
There are over a hundred different counters available. To increase the usefulness of varnishstat,
only counters with a value different from 0 is shown by default.
varnishstat can be used interactively, or it can display the current values of all the counters with
the -1
option. Both methods allow you to specify specific counters using
-f field1 -f field2 .. to limit the list.
In interactive mode, varnishstat has three areas. The top area shows process uptime and hitrate
information. The center area shows a list of counter values. The bottom area shows the description
of the currently selected counter.
Hitrate n and avg(n) are related, where n is the number intervals. avg(n) measures the cache hit rate
within n intervals. The default interval time is one second. You can configure the interval time with
the -w option.
Since there is no historical data of counters changes, varnishstat has to compute the average
while it is running. Therefore, when you start varnishstat, Hitrate values start at 1, then they
increase to 10, 100 and 1000. In the example above, the interval is one second. The hitrate average
avg(n) show data for the last 10, 100, and 438 seconds. The average hitrate is 0.9967 (or 99.67%) for
the last 10 seconds, 0.5686 for the last 100 seconds and 0.3870 for the last 438 seconds.
In the above example Varnish has served 1055 requests and is currently serving roughly 7.98
requests per second. Some counters do not have "per interval" data, but are gauges with values that
increase and decrease. Gauges normally start with a g_ prefix.
Page 58
Tip
You can also see many parameters in real-time graphs with the Varnish Administration
Console (VAC). Here are screenshots:
Figure 9: Cache Hit Meter
Figure 10: Hit vs Miss vs Hit for Pass
Figure 11: Req/sec, and Hit/sec
Page 59
Figure 12: Real Time Counters
Tip
If you need to collect statistics from more than a single Varnish server, Varnish Custom
Statistics (VCS) allows you to do that. In addition, VCS allows you to define your metrics to
collect and analyze aggregated statistics, for example:
A/B testing
Measuring click-through rate
Track slow pages and cache misses
Analyze what is "hot" right now in a news website
Track changes in currency conversions in e-commerce
Track changes in Stock Keeping Units (SKUs) behavior in e-commerce
Track number of unique consumers of HLS/HDS/DASH video streams
Page 60
4.6.1 Notable Counters

Table 8: Notable counters in varnishstat
Counter
Description
MAIN.threads_limited
Counts how many times varnishd hits the maximum allowed number
of threads. The maximum number of Varnish threads is given by the
parameter thread_pool_max. Issue the command
varnishadm param.show thread_pool_max to see this
parameter.
MAIN.threads_failed
Increases every time pthread_create() fails. You can avoid this

situation by tuning the maximum number of processes available with
the ulimit -u command. You may also look at the thread-max
Linux parameter in /proc/sys/kernel/threads-max.
MAIN.thread_queue_len
Shows the current number of sessions waiting for a thread. This

counter is first introduced in Varnish 4.
MAIN.sess_queued
Contains the number of sessions that are queued because there are no
available threads immediately. Consider to increase the
thread_pool_min parameter.
MAIN.sess_dropped
Counts how many times sessions are dropped because varnishd

hits the maximum thread queue length. You may consider to increase
the thread_queue_limit Varnish parameter as a solution to drop
less sessions.
MAIN.n_lru_nuked
Number of least recently used (LRU) objects thrown out to make room
for new objects. If this is zero, there is no reason to enlarge your cache.
Otherwise, your cache is evicting objects due to space constraints. In
this case, consider to increase the size of your cache.
MAIN.n_object
Number of cached objects
MAIN.client_req
Number of client requests
MAIN.losthdr
Counts HTTP header overflows produced either by client or server
Varnish provides a large number of counters for information, and debugging purposes. Table 8
presents counters that are typically important. Other counters may be relevant only for Varnish
developers when providing support.
Counters also provide feedback to Varnish developers on how Varnish works in production
environments. This feedback in turn allows Varnish to be developed according to its real usage. Issue
varnishstat -1 to list all counters with their current values.
Page 61
Tip
Remember that Varnish provides many reference manuals. To see all Varnish counter field
definitions, issue man varnish-counters.
Page 62
4.7 Exercise: Try varnishstat and varnishlog together

Run varnishstat and varnishlog while performing a few requests.
As you are finishing up this exercise, you hopefully begin to see the usefulness of the various Varnish
tools. varnishstat and varnishlog are the two most used tools, and are usually what you need
for sites that are not in production yet.
The various arguments for varnishlog are mostly designed to help you find exactly what you
want, and filter out the noise. On production traffic, the amount of log data that Varnish produces is
staggering, and filtering is a requirement for using varnishlog effectively.
Chapter 5Tuning
Page 63
5 Tuning
This chapter is for the system administration course only
This section covers:
Architecture
Best practices
Parameters
Perhaps the most important aspect of tuning Varnish is writing effective VCL code. For now, however,
we will focus on tuning Varnish for your hardware, operating system and network. To be able to do
that, knowledge of Varnish architecture is helpful.
It is important to know the internal architecture of Varnish for two reasons. First, the architecture is
chiefly responsible for the performance, and second, it influences how you integrate Varnish in your
own architecture.
There are several aspects of the design that were unique to Varnish when it was originally
implemented. Truly good solutions, regardless of reusing ancient ideas or coming up with something
radically different, is the aim of Varnish.
Chapter 5Tuning
Page 64
5.1 Varnish Architecture
Figure 13: Varnish Architecture

Figure 13 shows a block diagram of the Varnish architecture. The diagram shows the data flow
between the principal parts of Varnish.
The central block is the Varnish daemon that is contained in the varnishd binary program.
varnishd creates a new child process mainly for security reasons. The parent and child processes
are represented by the Manager and Cacher blocks respectively.
The Manager's command line interface (CLI) is accessible through: 1) varnishadm as explained in
The Management Interface varnishadm section, 2) the Varnish Agent vagent2, or 2) the Varnish
Administration Console (VAC) (via vagent2).
The Varnish Agent vagent2 is an open source HTTP REST interface that exposes varnishd services
to allow remote control and monitoring. vagent2 offers a web UI as shown in Figure 14, but you can
write your own UI since vagent2 is an open interface. Some features of the vagent2 are:
VCL uploading, downloading, persisting (storing to disk).
parameter viewing, storing (not persisting yet)
show/clear of panic messages
start/stop/status of varnishd
banning
varnishstat in JON format
Chapter 5Tuning
Page 65
Figure 14: Varnish Agent's HTML interface; designed to showcase the various features of the Varnish
Agent.
For
more
information
about
https://github.com/varnish/vagent2.
vagent2
and
installation
instructions,
please
visit
Varnish Software has a commercial offering of a fully functional web UI called Varnish Administration
Console (VAC). For more information about VAC, refer to the Varnish Administration Console (VAC)
section.
Page 66
Chapter 5Tuning
5.1.1 The Parent Process: The Manager

The Manager process is owned by the root user, and its main functions are:
apply configuration changes (from VCL files and parameters)
compile VCL
monitor Varnish
provide a Varnish command line interface (CLI)
initialize the Cacher
The Manager checks every few seconds whether the Cacher is still there. If the Manager does not get
a reply within a given interval defined in ping_interval, the Manager kills the Cacher and starts it
up again. This automatic restart also happens if the Cacher exits unexpectedly, for example, from a
segmentation fault or assert error.
Automatic restart of child processes is a resilience property of Varnish. This property ensures that
even if Varnish contains a critical bug that crashes the child, the child starts up again usually within a
few seconds. You can toggle this property using the auto_restart parameter.
Note
Even if you do not perceive a lengthy service downtime, you should check whether the
Varnish child is being restarted. This is important, because child restarts introduce extra
loading time as varnishd is constantly emptying its cache. Automatic restarts are logged
into /var/log/syslog.
To verify that the child process is not being restarted, you can also check its lifetime with the
MAIN.uptime counter in varnishstat.
Varnish Software and the Varnish community at large occasionally get requests for assistance
in performance tuning Varnish that turn out to be crash-issues.
Chapter 5Tuning
Page 67
5.1.2 The Child Process: The Cacher

Since the Cacher listens on public IP addresses and known ports, it is exposed to evil clients.
Therefore, for security reasons, this child process is owned by an unprivileged user, and it has no
backwards communication to its parent, the Manager.
The main functions of the Cacher are:
listen for client requests
manage worker threads
store caches
log traffic
update counters for statistics
The Cacher consists of several different types of threads, including, but not limited to:
Acceptor thread to accept new connections and delegate them.
Worker threads - one per client request (session). It's common to use hundreds of worker
threads.
Expiry thread, to evict old content from the cache.
Varnish uses workspaces to reduce the contention between each thread when they need to acquire
or modify memory. There are multiple workspaces, but the most important one is the session
workspace, which is used to manipulate session data. An example is changing www.example.com to
example.com before it is entered into the cache, to reduce the number of duplicates.
It is important to remember that even if you have 5MB of session workspace and are using 1000
threads, the actual memory usage is not 5GB. The virtual memory usage will indeed be 5GB, but
unless you actually use the memory, this is not a problem. Your memory controller and operating
system will keep track of what you actually use.
To communicate with the rest of the system, the child process uses the SHMLOG accessible from the
file system. This means that if a thread needs to log something, all it has to do is to grab a lock, write
to a memory area and then free the lock. In addition to that, each worker thread has a cache for
log-data to reduce lock contention.
The log file is usually about 80MB, and split in two. The first part is counters, the second part is
request data. To view the actual data, a number of tools exist that parses the SHMLOG. Since the
log-data is not meant to be written to disk in its raw form, Varnish can afford to be very verbose. You
then use one of the log-parsing tools to extract the piece of information you want -- either to store it
permanently or to monitor Varnish in real-time.
If something goes wrong in the Cacher, it logs a detailed panic message to syslog. For testing, you
can induce panic to varnishd by issuing the command varnishadm debug.panic.worker or by
pressing the Induce Panic button in the Varnish Agent web interface.
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Chapter 5Tuning
5.1.3 VCL Compilation

The below command prints VCL code compiled to C language and exit. This is useful to check
whether your VCL code compiles correctly.
$varnishd -C -f <filename>
Configuring the caching policies of Varnish is done in the Varnish Configuration Language (VCL). Your
VCL is then interpreted by the Manager process into C, compiled by a normal C compiler typically
gcc, and linked into the running Varnish instance. Since the VCL compilation is done outside of the
child process, there is no risk of affecting the running Varnish by accidentally loading an ill-formatted
VCL.
As a result of this, changing configuration while running Varnish is very cheap. Policies of the new
VCL takes effect immediately. However, objects cached with an older configuration may persist until
they have no more old references or the new configuration acts on them.
A compiled VCL file is kept around until you restart Varnish completely, or until you issue
vcl.discard from the management interface. You can only discard compiled VCL files after all
references to them are gone. You can see the amount of VCL references by reading the parameter
vcl.list.
Chapter 5Tuning
Page 69
5.2 Storage Backends

Varnish supports different methods to allocate space for the cache. You can select one method with
the -s option of varnishd.
malloc
file
persistent (deprecated)
Varnish Massive Storage Engine (MSE)
Note
As a rule of thumb use: malloc if it fits in memory, or file otherwise. Expect around 1kB of
overhead per object cached.
They approach the same basic problem from different angles. With the -s malloc method, Varnish
will request the entire size of the cache with a malloc() (memory allocation) library call. The operating
system divides the cache between memory and disk by swapping out what it can't fit in memory.
Another possibility is to use the -s file storage backend. This option creates a file on a filesystem
to contain the entire cache. Then, the operating system maps the entire file into memory if possible.
The -s file storage method does not retain data when you stop or restart Varnish! For this
purpose, Varnish provides a persistence option -s persistent. The usage of this option, however,
is strongly discouraged mainly because of the consistency issues that arise with it.
The Varnish Massive Storage Engine (MSE) is an improved storage backend for Varnish Plus only. Its
main improvements are decreased disk IO load and lower storage fragmentation. MSE is designed
and tested with storage sizes up to 10 TB.
When choosing storage backend, use malloc if your cache will be contained entirely or mostly in
memory. If your cache will exceed the available physical memory, you have two options: file or MSE.
We recommend you to use MSE because it performs much better than file storage backend.
It is important to keep in mind that the size you specify with the -s option is the size for the actual
cache. Varnish has an overhead on top of this for keeping track of the cache, so the actual memory
footprint of Varnish will exceed what the '-s' argument specifies if the cache is full. The current
estimate (subject to change on individual Varnish-versions) is that about 1kB of overhead needed for
each object. For 1 million objects, that means 1GB extra memory usage.
In addition to the per-object overhead, there is also a fairly static overhead which you can calculate
by starting Varnish without any objects. Typically around 100MB.
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Chapter 5Tuning
5.3 The SHared Memory Log (SHMLOG)

Avoid I/O operations.
Mount the shared memory log as tmpfs.
shm-log is not persistent.
Varnish' SHared Memory LOG (SHMLOG) is used to log most data. It is sometimes called a shm-log,
and operates on a circular buffer. The SHMLOG is 80MB large by default, which gives a certain
history, but it is not persistent unless you instruct Varnish to do otherwise.
There is not much you have to do with the SHMLOG, except ensure that it does not cause I/O
operations. You can avoid I/O by mounting the SHMLOG as a temporary file storage (tmpfs). This is
typically configured in /etc/fstab, and the shm-log is normally kept under /var/lib/varnish/
or equivalent locations. You need to restart varnishd after mounting it as tmpfs.
The SHMLOG is not persistent. You can issue varnishlog -d to see old log entries. All the content
under /var/lib/varnish/ directory is safe to delete.
Warning
Some Varnish distribution setup the file storage backend option -s file by default. Those
distribution set a path that puts the storage file in the same directory as the shm-log. We
discourage this practice.
Chapter 5Tuning
Page 71
5.4 Tunable Parameters

In the CLI:
param.show -l
Do not fall for the copy/paste tips
Test the parameters in CLI, then store them in the configuration file
Varnish has many different parameters which can be adjusted to make Varnish act better under
specific workloads or with specific software and hardware setups. They can all be viewed with
param.show in the management interface varnishadm.
You can set up parameters in two different ways. In varnishadm, use the command
param.set
<param>
<value>.
Alternatively,
you
can
issue
the
command
varnishd -p param=value.
Remember that changes made in the management interface are not persistent. Therefore, unless
you store your changes in a startup script, they will be lost when Varnish restarts.
The general advice with regards to parameters is to keep it simple. Most of the defaults are optimal.
If you do not have a very specific need, it is generally better to use the default values.
A few hidden debug commands exist in the CLI, which can be revealed with help -d. These
commands are meant exclusively for development or testing, and many of them are downright
dangerous. They are hidden for a reason, and the only exception is perhaps debug.health, which is
somewhat common to use.
Tip
Parameters can also be configured via the Varnish Administration Console (VAC) as shown in
the figure below.
Page 72
Chapter 5Tuning
Figure 15: GUI to configure parameters via the Varnish Administration Console (VAC).
Chapter 5Tuning
Page 73
5.5 Varnish Tuner

Command varnishtuner
Suggested values for system variables and Varnish parameters are installation specific
With our without user input
Available for Varnish Plus only
The biggest potential for improvement is outside Varnish. First and foremost in tuning the network
stack and the TCP/IP connection handling.
Varnish Tuner is a program toolkit based on the experience and documentation we have built. The
toolkit tries to gather as much information as possible from your installation and decides which
parameters need tuning.
The tuning advice that the toolkit gives is specific to that system. The Varnish Tuner gathers
information from the system it is running in. Based on that information, it suggests values for
systems variables of your OS and parameters for your Varnish installation that can be beneficial to
tune. Varnish Tuner includes the following information for each suggested system variable or
parameter:
current value
suggested value
text explaining why it is advised to be changed
varnishtuner requires by default user input to produce its output. If you are not sure about the
requested input, you can instruct varnishtuner to do not suggest parameters that require user
input. For this, you issue varnishtuner -n.
Varnish Tuner is valuable to both experts and non-experts. Varnish Tuner is available for Varnish
Plus series only.
Warning
Copying Varnish Tuner suggestions to other systems might not be a good idea.
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Chapter 5Tuning
5.5.1 Varnish Tuner Persistence

The output of varnishtuner updates every time you introduce a new input or execute a suggested
command. However, the result of the suggested commands are not necessarily persistent, which
means that they do not survive a reboot or restart of Varnish Cache. To make the tuning persistent,
you can add do the following:
Specify the Varnish parameters in the configuration file.
Specify
the
sysctl
system
variables
in
/etc/sysctl.conf
/etc/sysctl.d/varnishtuner.conf (if /etc/sysctl.d/ is included).
To see the usage documentation of Varnish Tuner, execute: varnishtuner --help.
or
in
Chapter 5Tuning
Page 75
5.5.2 Install Varnish Tuner

Below are the installation instructions for getting the tuner from our repositories. Replace the
<username> and <password> with the ones of your Varnish Plus subscription. If you do not know
them, please send an email to our support email to recover them.
Ubuntu Trusty 14.04
Packages in our repositories are signed and distributed via https. You need to enable https support
in the package manager and install our public key first:
apt-get install -y apt-transport-https
curl https://<username>:<password>@repo.varnish-software.com/GPG-key.txt |
apt-key add You add the Varnish Plus repository to /etc/apt/sources.list.d/varnish-plus.list:
# Varnish Tuner
deb https://<username>:<password>@repo.varnish-software.com/ubuntu
<distribution_codename> non-free
Where <distribution_codename> is the codename of your Linux distribution, for example:
trusty, debian, or wheezy.
Then:
apt-get update
apt-get install varnishtuner
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6
To
install
Varnish
Plus
on
RHEL6,
/etc/yum.repos.d/varnish-plus.repo:
put
the
following
lines
[varnishtuner]
name=Varnishtuner
baseurl=https://<username>:<password>@repo.varnish-software.com/redhat/ \
varnishtuner/el6
enabled=1
gpgcheck=0
into
Chapter 5Tuning
Page 76
5.6 Threading Model

The child process runs multiple threads in two tread pools
Worker threads are the bread and butter of the Varnish architecture
Utility-threads
Table 9: Relevant threads in Varnish
Thread-name
Amount of threads
Task
cache-worker
1 per active connection
Handle requests
cache-main
Startup
ban lurker
Clean bans
acceptor
Accept new connections
epoll/kqueue
Configurable, default: 2
Manage thread pools
expire
Remove old content
backend poll
1 per backend poll
Health checks
The child process runs multiple threads in two thread pools. The threads of these pools are called
worker threads. Table 9 presents relevant threads.
Chapter 5Tuning
Page 77
5.7 Threading parameters

Thread pools can safely be ignored
Maximum: roughly 5000 (total)
Start them sooner rather than later
Maximum and minimum values are per thread pool
Table 10: Threads parameters
Parameter
Default
Description
thread_pool_add_delay
2 [milliseconds]
Period of time to wait for subsequent thread

creation.
thread_pool_destroy_delay
1 second
Added time to thread_pool_timeout.
thread_pool_fail_delay
200 [milliseconds]
Period of time before retrying the creation of a

thread. This after the creation of a thread failed.
thread_pool_max
500 [threads]
Maximum number of worker threads per pool.
thread_pool_min
5 [threads]
Minimum number of worker threads per pool.
thread_pool_stack
65536 [bytes]
Worker thread stack size.
thread_pool_timeout
300 [seconds]
Period of time before idle threads are destroyed.
thread_pools
2 [pools]
Number of worker thread pools.
thread_queue_limit
20 requests
Permitted queue length per thread-pool.
thread_stats_rate
10 [requests]
Maximum number of jobs a worker thread may

handle before it is forced to dump its accumulated
stats into the global counters.
workspace_thread
2 [kb]
Bytes of auxillary workspace per thread.
To tune Varnish, think about the expected traffic. The most important thread setting is the number
of cache-worker threads. You may configure thread_pool_min and thread_pool_max. These
parameters are per thread pool.
Although Varnish threading model allows you to use multiple thread pools, we recommend you to
do not modify this parameter. Time and experience shows that 2 thread pools are enough. Adding
more pools will not increase performance.
Note
If you run across the tuning advice that suggests to have a thread pool per CPU core, rest
assured that this is old advice. Experiments and data from production environments have
revealed that as long as you have two thread pools (which is the default), there is nothing to
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Chapter 5Tuning
gain by increasing the number of thread pools. Still, you may increase the number of threads
per pool.
All other thread variables are not configurable.
Chapter 5Tuning
Page 79
5.7.1 Details of Threading Parameters

Most parameters can be left to the defaults with the exception is the number of threads. Varnish will
use one thread for each session and the number of threads you let Varnish use is directly
proportional to how many requests Varnish can serve concurrently.
Among these, thread_pool_min and thread_pool_max are the most important parameters.
Values of these parameters are per thread pool. The thread_pools parameter is mainly used to
calculate the total number of threads. For the sake of keeping things simple, the current best
practice is to leave thread_pools at the default 2 [pools].
Varnish operates with multiple pools of threads. When a connection is accepted, the connection is
delegated to one of these thread pools. Afterwards, the thread pool either delegates the connection
request to an available thread, queue the request otherwise, or drop the connection if the queue is
full. By default, Varnish uses 2 thread pools, and this has proven sufficient for even the most busy
Varnish server.
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Chapter 5Tuning
5.7.2 Number of Threads

Varnish has the ability to spawn new worker threads on demand, and remove them once the load is
reduced. This is mainly intended for traffic spikes. It's a better approach to try to always keep a few
threads idle during regular traffic than it is to run on a minimum amount of threads and constantly
spawn and destroy threads as demand changes. As long as you are on a 64-bit system, the cost of
running a few hundred threads extra is very low.
The thread_pool_min parameter defines how many threads will be running for each thread pool
even when there is no load. thread_pool_max defines the maximum amount of threads that will
be used per thread pool. That means that with the minimum defaults 5 [threads] and 500 [threads]
of minimum and maximums threads per pool respectively, you have:
at least 5 [threads] * 2 [pools] worker threads at any given time
no more than 500 [threads] * 2 [pools] worker threads ever
We rarely recommend running Varnish with more than 5000 threads. If you seem to need more than
5000 threads, it is very likely that there is something wrong in your setup. Therefore, you should
investigate elsewhere before you increase the maximum value.
For minimum, it's common to operate with 500 to 1000 threads minimum (total). You can observe if
those values are enough by looking at MAIN.sess_queued through varnishstat. Look at the
counter over time, because it is fairly static right after startup.
Warning
New threads use preallocated workspace. If threads have not enough workspace, the child
process is unable to process the task and it terminates. The workspace needed depends on
the task that the thread handles. This is normally defined in your VCL. To avoid that the child
terminates, evaluate your VCL code and consider to increase the workspace_client or
workspace_backend parameter.
Chapter 5Tuning
Page 81
5.7.3 Timing Thread Growth

Varnish can use several thousand threads, and has had this capability from the very beginning.
However, not all operating system kernels were prepared to deal with this capability. Therefore the
parameter thread_pool_add_delay was added to ensure that there is a small delay between
each thread that spawns. As operating systems have matured, this has become less important and
the default value of thread_pool_add_delay has been reduced dramatically, from 20 ms to 2 ms.
There are a few, less important parameters related to thread timing. The thread_pool_timeout is
how long a thread is kept around when there is no work for it before it is removed. This only applies
if you have more threads than the minimum, and is rarely changed.
Another less important parameter is the thread_pool_fail_delay. After the operating system
fails to create a new thread, thread_pool_fail_delay defines how long to wait for a re-trial.
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Chapter 5Tuning
5.8 System Parameters

As Varnish has matured, fewer and fewer parameters require tuning. The workspace_client and
workspace_backend are parameters that could still be relevant.
workspace_client incoming HTTP header workspace from the client
workspace_backend bytes of HTTP protocol workspace for backend HTTP req/resp
ESI typically requires exponential growth
Remember: it is virtual, not physical memory
Workspaces are some of the things you can change with parameters. Sometimes you may have to
increase them to avoid running out of workspace.
The workspace_client parameter states how much memory can be allocated for each HTTP
session. This space is used for tasks like string manipulation of incoming headers. The
workspace_backend parameter indicates how much memory can be allocated to modify objects
returned from the backend. After an object is modified, its exact size is allocated and the object is
stored read-only.
As most of the parameters can be left unchanged, we will not go through all of them. You can take a
look at the list of parameter by issuing varnishadm param.show -l to get information about
what they can do.
Chapter 5Tuning
Page 83
5.9 Timers
Table 11: Timers
Parameter
Default
Description
Scope
connect_timeout
3.5 [s]
OS/network latency
Backend
first_byte_timeout
60 [s]
Web page generation
Backend
between_bytes_timeout
60 [s]
Hiccoughs
Backend
send_timeout
600 [seconds]
Client-in-tunnel
Client
timeout_idle
5 [seconds]
keep-alive timeout
Client
timeout_req
2 [seconds]
deadline to receive a complete

request header
Client
cli_timeout
60 [seconds]
Management thread->child
Management
The timeout-parameters are generally set to pretty good defaults, but you might have to adjust them
for unusual applications. The default value of connect_timeout is 3.5 [s]. This value is more than
enough when having the Varnish server and the backend in the same server room. Consider to
increase the connect_timeout value if your Varnish server and backend have a higher network
latency.
Keep in mind that the session timeout affects how long sessions are kept around, which in turn
affects file descriptors left open. It is not wise to increase the session timeout without taking this into
consideration.
The cli_timeout is how long the management thread waits for the worker thread to reply before
it assumes it is dead, kills it and starts it back up. The default value seems to do the trick for most
users today.
Warning
If connect_timeout is set too high, it does not let Varnish handle errors gracefully.
Note
Another use-case for increasing connect_timeout occurs when virtual machines are
involved, as they can increase the connection time significantly.
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Chapter 5Tuning
Tip
More
information
https://www.varnish-software.com/blog/understanding-timeouts-varnish-cache.
in
Chapter 5Tuning
Page 85
5.10 Exercise: Tune first_byte_timeout

Run varnishstat and varnishlog while performing a few requests.
See, analyze and understand how counters in varnishstat
varnishlog change.
and parameters in
Create a small CGI script under /usr/lib/cgi-bin/ containing:

#! /bin/sh
sleep 5
echo "Content-type: text/plain"
echo "Cache-control: max-age=0"
echo
echo "Hello world"
date
1. Make it executable.
2. Test that it works without involving of Varnish.
3. Test it through Varnish.
4. Set first_byte_timeout to 2 seconds.
5. Check how Varnish times out the request to the backend.
Tip
You may need to enable the cgi module in apache. One way to do that, is by issuing the
commands: a2enmod cgi, and then service apache2 restart.
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Chapter 5Tuning
5.11 Exercise: Configure threading

While performing this exercise, watch the MAIN.threads counter in varnishstat to know how many
threads are running.
Change the thread_pool_min and thread_pool_max
running at any given time, but never more than 400.
parameters to get 100 threads
Make the changes work across restarts of Varnish.

Extra: Experiment with thread_pool_add_delay and thread_pool_timeout while watching
varnishstat to see how thread creation and destruction is affected. Does thread_pool_timeout
affect already running threads?
You can also try changing the thread_pool_stack variable to a lower value. This will only affect
new threads, but try to find out how low you can set it, and what happens if it's too low.
Note
It's not common to modify thread_pool_stack, thread_pool_add_delay
or
thread_pool_timeout. These assignments are for educational purposes, and not intended
as an encouragement to change the values.
Chapter 6HTTP
Page 87
6 HTTP
This chapter is for the webdeveloper course only
This chapter covers:
Protocol basics
Requests and responses
HTTP request/response control flow
Statelessness and idempotence
Cache related headers
HTTP is at the heart of Varnish, or rather the model HTTP represents.
This chapter will cover the basics of HTTP as a protocol, how it's used in the wild, and delve into
caching as it applies to HTTP.
Page 88
Chapter 6HTTP
6.1 Protocol basics

Hyper-Text Transfer Protocol, HTTP, is at the core of the web
Specified
by
the
IETF,
the
http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2616
latest
version
(HTTP/1.1)
is
available
from
A request consists of a request method, headers and an optional request body.

A response consists of a response status, headers and an optional response body.
Multiple requests can be sent over a single connection, in serial.
Clients will open multiple connections to fetch resources in parallel.
HTTP is a networking protocol for distributed systems. It is the foundation of data communication
for the Web. The development of this standard is done by the IETF and the W3C. The latest version of
the standard is HTTP/1.1. In 2014, new RFCs have been published to clarify (and obsolete) 2616: RFCs
7230 to 7235.
A new version of HTTP called HTTP/2 has been released, but RFCs haven't been published yet.
Basically HTTP/2 is a radically different protocol but shares the same goals.
Chapter 6HTTP
Page 89
6.2 Requests
Standard request methods are: GET, POST, HEAD, OPTIONS, PUT, DELETE, TRACE, or
CONNECT.
This is followed by a URI, e.g: /img/image.png or /index.html
Usually followed by the HTTP version
A new-line (CRLF), followed by an arbitrary
(Accept-Language, Cookie, Host, User-Agent, etc).
amount
of
CRLF-separated
headers
A single empty line, ending in CRLF.

An optional message body, depending on the request method.
Each request has the same, strict and fairly simple pattern. A request method informs the web
server what sort of request this is: Is the client trying to fetch a resource (GET), or update some
data(POST)? Or just get the headers of a resource (HEAD)?
There are strict rules that apply to the request methods. For instance, a GET request should not
contain a request body, but a POST request can.
Similarly, a web server can not attach a request body to a response to a HEAD body.
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Chapter 6HTTP
6.3 Request example

GET / HTTP/1.1
Host: localhost
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X 10.5; fr; rv:1.9.2.16) \
Gecko/20110319 Firefox/3.6.16
Accept: text/html,application/xhtml+xml,application/xml;q=0.9,*/*;q=0.8
Accept-Language: fr,fr-fr;q=0.8,en-us;q=0.5,en;q=0.3
Accept-Encoding: gzip,deflate
Accept-Charset: ISO-8859-1,utf-8;q=0.7,*;q=0.7
Keep-Alive: 115
Cache-Control: max-age=0
The above is a typical HTTP GET request for the / resource.
Note that the Host-header contains the hostname as seen by the browser. The above request was
generated by entering http://localhost/ in the browser. The browser automatically adds a number of
headers. Some of these will vary depending on language settings, others will vary depending on
whether the client has a cached copy of the page already, or if the client is doing a refresh or forced
refresh.
Whether the server honors these headers will depend on both the server in question and the specific
header.
The following is an example of an HTTP request using the POST method, which includes a request
body:
POST /accounts/ServiceLoginAuth HTTP/1.1
Host: www.google.com
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X 10.5; fr; rv:1.9.2.16) \
Gecko/20110319 Firefox/3.6.16
Accept: text/html,application/xhtml+xml,application/xml;q=0.9,*/*;q=0.8
Accept-Language: fr,fr-fr;q=0.8,en-us;q=0.5,en;q=0.3
Accept-Encoding: gzip,deflate
Accept-Charset: ISO-8859-1,utf-8;q=0.7,*;q=0.7
Keep-Alive: 115
Referer: https://www.google.com/accounts/ServiceLogin
Cookie: GoogleAccountsLocale_session=en;[...]
Content-Type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded
Content-Length: 288
ltmpl=default[...]&signIn=Sign+in&asts=
Chapter 6HTTP
Page 91
6.4 Response
HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Cache-Control: max-age=150
Content-Length: 150
[data]
An HTTP response contains the HTTP versions, a status code (e.g: 200) and a reason (e.g: OK)
CRLF as line separator
A number of headers
Headers are terminated with a blank line
Optional response body
The HTTP response is similar to the request itself. The response code informs the browser both
whether the request succeeded and what type of response this is. The response message is a
text-representation of the same information, and is often ignored by the browser itself.
Examples of status codes are 200 OK, 404 File Not Found, 304 Not Modified and so fort. They are all
defined in the HTTP standard, and grouped into the following categories:
1xx: Informational - Request received, continuing process
2xx: Success - The action was successfully received, understood, and accepted
3xx: Redirection - Further action must be taken in order to complete the request
4xx: Client Error - The request contains bad syntax or cannot be fulfilled
5xx: Server Error - The server failed to fulfill an apparently valid request
Note
The main difference between a request and a response (besides the semantics) is the start
line. Both share the same syntax for headers and the body, but some headers are request- or
response-specific.
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Chapter 6HTTP
6.5 Response example

HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Server: Apache/2.2.14 (Ubuntu)
X-Powered-By: PHP/5.3.2-1ubuntu4.7
Cache-Control: public, max-age=86400
Last-Modified: Mon, 04 Apr 2011 04:13:41 +0000
Expires: Sun, 11 Mar 1984 12:00:00 GMT
Vary: Cookie,Accept-Encoding
ETag: "1301890421"
Content-Type: text/html; charset=utf-8
Content-Length: 23562
Date: Mon, 04 Apr 2011 09:02:26 GMT
X-Varnish: 1886109724 1886107902
Age: 17324
Via: 1.1 varnish
[data]
Chapter 6HTTP
Page 93
6.6 HTTP request/response control flow
Figure 16: HTTP request/response control flow diagram

The client sends an HTTP request to the server which returns an HTTP response with the message
body.
Page 94
Chapter 6HTTP
6.7 Statelessness and idempotence

statelessness
HTTP is by definition a stateless protocol which means that in theory your browser has to
reconnect to the server for every request. In practice there is a header called Keep-Alive you may
use if you want to keep the connection open between the client (your browser) and the server.
idempotence
Idempotence means that an operation can be applied multiple times without changing the
result. GET and PUT HTTP request are expected to be idempotent whereas POST requests are
not. In other words, you can not cache POST HTTP responses.
For more discussion about idempotence http://queue.acm.org/detail.cfm?id=2187821.
Chapter 6HTTP
Page 95
6.8 Cache related headers

HTTP provides a list of headers dedicated to page caching and cache invalidation. The most
important ones are:
Expires
Cache-Control
Etag
Last-Modified
If-Modified-Since
If-None-Match
Vary
Age
Page 96
Chapter 6HTTP
6.9 Exercise: Test various Cache headers

Before we talk about all the various cache headers and cache mechanisms, we will use
httpheadersexample.php to experiment and get a sense of what it's all about.
Try both clicking the links twice, hitting refresh and forced refresh (usually done by hitting control-F5,
depending on browser).
Try out the Expires-header and see how the browser and Varnish behave.
What happens when both Expires and Cache-Control is present?
Test the If-Modified-Since request too. Does the browser issue a
request to Varnish? If the item was in cache, does Varnish query the web-server?
Try the Vary-test by using two different browsers at the same time.
When performing this exercise, try to see if you can spot the patterns. There are many levels of
cache on the Web, and you have to think about more than just Varnish.
If it hasn't already, it's likely that browser cache will confuse you at least a few times through this
course. When that happens, pull up varnishlog or another browser.
Chapter 6HTTP
Page 97
6.10 Expires
The Expires response header field gives the date/time after which the response is considered stale.
A stale cache item will not be returned by any cache (proxy cache or client cache).
The syntax for this header is:
Expires: GMT formatted date
It is recommended not to define Expires too far in the future. Setting it to 1 year is usually enough.
Using Expires does not prevent the cached resource to be updated. If a resource is updated changing
its name (by using a version number for instance) is possible.
Expires works best for any file that is part of your design like JavaScripts stylesheets or images.
Chapter 6HTTP
Page 98
6.11 Cache-Control
The Cache-Control header field specifies directives that must be applied by all caching mechanisms
(from proxy cache to browser cache). Cache-Control accepts the following arguments (only the most
relevant are described):
public: The response may be cached by any cache.
no-store: The response body must not be stored by any cache mechanism;
no-cache: Authorizes a cache mechanism to store the response in its cache but it must not
reuse it without validating it with the origin server first. In order to avoid any confusion with this
argument think of it as a "store-but-do-no-serve-from-cache-without-revalidation" instruction.
max-age: Specifies the period in seconds during which the cache will be considered fresh;
s-maxage: Like max-age but it applies only to public caches;
must-revalidate: Indicates that a stale cache item can not be serviced without revalidation with
the origin server first;
Table 12: Cache-control argument for each context
Argument
Request
Response
no-cache
no-store
max-age
s-maxage
max-stale
min-fresh
no-transform
only-if-cached
public
private
must-revalidate
proxy-revalidate
Unlike Expires, Cache-Control is both a request and a response header. Table 12 summarizes the
arguments you may use for each context.
Example of a Cache-Control header:
Cache-Control: public, must-revalidate, max-age=2592000
Chapter 6HTTP
Page 99
Note
As you might have noticed Expires and Cache-Control do more or less the same job,
Cache-Control gives you more control though. There is a significant difference between these
two headers:
Cache-Control uses relative times in seconds, cf (s)max-age
Expires always returns an absolute date
Note
Cache-Control always overrides Expires.
Note
By default, Varnish does not care about the Cache-Control request header. If you want to let
users update the cache via a force refresh you need to do it yourself.
Page 100
Chapter 6HTTP
6.12 Last-Modified
The Last-Modified response header field indicates the date and time at which the origin server
believes the variant was last modified. This headers may be used in conjunction with
If-Modified-Since and If-None-Match.
Example of a Last-Modified header:
Last-Modified: Wed, 01 Sep 2004 13:24:52 GMT
Chapter 6HTTP
Page 101
6.13 If-Modified-Since
The If-Modified-Since request header field is used with a method to make it conditional:
if the requested variant has not been modified since the time specified in this field, an entity
will not be returned from the server;
instead, a 304 (not modified) response will be returned without any message-body.
Example of an If-Modified-Since header:
If-Modified-Since: Wed, 01 Sep 2004 13:24:52 GMT
Figure 17: If-Modified-Since control flow diagram.
Chapter 6HTTP
Page 102
6.14 If-None-Match
The If-None-Match request header field is used with a method to make it conditional.
A client that has one or more entities previously obtained from the resource can verify that none of
those entities is current by including a list of their associated entity tags in the If-None-Match header
field.
The purpose of this feature is to allow efficient updates of cached information with a minimum
amount of transaction overhead. It is also used to prevent a method (e.g. PUT) from inadvertently
modifying an existing resource when the client believes that the resource does not exist.
Example of an If-None-Match header:
If-None-Match: "1edec-3e3073913b100"
Figure 18: If-None-Match control diagram.
Chapter 6HTTP
Page 103
6.15 Etag
The ETag response header field provides the current value of the entity tag for the requested
variant. The idea behind Etag is to provide a unique value for a resource's contents.
Example of an Etag header:
Etag: "1edec-3e3073913b100"
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Chapter 6HTTP
6.16 Pragma
The Pragma request header is a legacy header and should no longer be used. Some applications still
send headers like Pragma: no-cache but this is for backwards compatibility reasons only.
Any proxy cache should treat Pragma: no-cache as Cache-Control: no-cache, and should not
be seen as a reliable header especially when used as a response header.
Chapter 6HTTP
Page 105
6.17 Vary
The Vary response header indicates the response returned by the origin server may vary depending
on headers received in the request.
The most common usage of Vary is to use Vary: Accept-Encoding, which tells caches (Varnish
included) that the content might look different depending on the Accept-Encoding-header the client
sends. In other words: The page can be delivered compressed or uncompressed depending on the
client.
The Vary-header is one of the trickiest headers to deal with for a cache. A cache, like Varnish, does
not necessarily understand the semantics of a header, or what part triggers different variants of a
page.
As a result, using Vary: User-Agent for instance tells a cache that for ANY change in the
User-Agent-header, the content might look different. Since there are probably thousands of
User-Agent strings out there, this means you will drastically reduce the efficiency of any cache
method.
An other example is using Vary: Cookie which is actually not a bad idea. Unfortunately, you can't
issue Vary: Cookie(but only THESE cookies: ...). And since a client will send you a great
deal of cookies, this means that just using Vary: Cookie is not necessarily sufficient. We will
discuss this further in the Content Composition chapter.
Note
Varnish can handle Accept-Encoding and Vary: Accept-Encoding, because Varnish has
support for gzip compression.
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Chapter 6HTTP
6.18 Age
A cache server can send an additional response header, Age, to indicate the age of the
response.
Varnish (and other caches) does this.
Browsers (and Varnish) will use the Age-header to determine how long to cache.
E.g: for a max-age-based equation: cache duration = max-age - Age
If you allow Varnish to cache for a long time, the Age-header could effectively disallow
client-side caches.
Consider what happens if you let Varnish cache content for a week, because you can easily invalidate
the cache Varnish keeps. If you do not change the Age-header, Varnish will happily inform clients
that the content is, for example, two days old, and that the maximum age should be no more than
fifteen minutes.
Browsers will obey this. They will use the reply, but they will also realize that it has exceeded its
max-age, so they will not cache it.
Varnish will do the same, if your web-server emits and Age-header (or if you put one Varnish-server
in front of another).
We will see in later chapters how we can handle this in Varnish.
Chapter 6HTTP
Page 107
6.19 Header availability summary

The table below lists HTTP headers seen above and whether they are a request header or a response
one.
Table 13: Header availability summary
Header
Request
Expires
Cache-Control
X
X
Last-Modified
X
X
If-Modified-Since
If-None-Match
Etag
Pragma
Response
X
X
Vary
Age
Chapter 6HTTP
Page 108
6.20 Cache-hit and misses

cache-hit
There is a cache-hit when Varnish returns a page from its cache instead of forwarding the request to
the origin server.
Figure 19: Cache-hit control flow diagram

cache-miss
There is a cache-miss when Varnish has to forward the request to the origin server so the page can
be serviced.
Figure 20: Cache-miss control flow diagram
Chapter 6HTTP
Page 109
6.21 Exercise: Use article.php to test Age

1. Modify the article.php-script
Cache-Control: max-age=60.
to
send
an
Age
header
that
says
30
and
2. Watch varnishlog.
3. Send a request to Varnish for article.php. See what Age-Header Varnish replies with.
4. Is the Age-header an accurate method to determine if Varnish made a cache hit or not?
5. How long does Varnish cache the reply? How long would a browser cache it?
Also consider how you would avoid issues like this to begin with. We do not yet know how to modify
Varnish' response headers, but hopefully you will understand why you may need to do that.
Varnish is not the only part of your web-stack that parses and honors cache-related headers. The
primary consumer of such headers are the web browsers, and there might also be other caches
along the way which you do not control, like a company-wide proxy server.
By using s-maxage instead of max-age we limit the number of consumers to cache servers, but even
s-maxage will be used by caching proxies which you do not control.
In the next few chapters, you will learn how to modify the response headers Varnish sends. That
way, your web-server can emit response headers that are only seen and used by Varnish.
Page 110
Chapter 7VCL Basics
7 VCL Basics
The Varnish Configuration Language (VCL) is a domain-specific language
VCL as a state machine
VCL subroutines
Built-in subroutines
Available functions, legal return actions and variables.
The Varnish Configuration Language (VCL) is a domain-specific language designed to describe
request handling and document caching policies for Varnish Cache. When a new configuration is
loaded, the varnishd manager process translates the VCL code to C and compiles it to a shared
object. This shared object is then loaded into the cacher process.
This chapter focuses on the most important tasks to write effective VCL code. For this, you will learn
the basic syntax of VCL, and the most important VCL built-in subroutines: VCL_recv and
VCL_backend_fetch. All other built-in subroutines are taught in the next chapter.
Tip
Remember that Varnish has many reference manuals. For more details about VCL, check its
manual page by issuing man vcl.
Chapter 7VCL Basics
7.1 Varnish Finite State Machine
Figure 21: Simplified Version of the Varnish Finite State Machine
Page 111
Page 112
Chapter 7VCL Basics
VCL is also often described as a finite state machine. Each state has available certain parameters that
you can use in your VCL code. For example: response HTTP headers are only available after
vcl_backend_fetch state.
Figure 21 shows a simplified version of the Varnish finite state machine. This version shows by no
means all possible transitions, but only a traditional set of them. Figure 22 shows a detailed version
of the state machine for the frontend worker as a request flow diagram. A detailed version of the
request flow diagram for the backend worker is in the VCL vcl_backend_fetch and
vcl_backend_response section.
States in VCL are conceptualized as subroutines, with the exception of the waiting state described in
Waiting State
Subroutines in VCL take neither arguments nor return values. Each subroutine terminates by calling
return (action), where action is a keyword that indicates the desired outcome. Subroutines
may inspect and manipulate HTTP headers and various other aspects of each request. Subroutines
instruct how requests are handled.
Subroutine example:
sub pipe_if_local {
if (client.ip ~ local) {
return (pipe);
}
}
To call a subroutine, use the call instruction followed by the subroutine's name:
call pipe_if_local;
Varnish has built-in subroutines that are hook into the Varnish workflow. These built-in subroutines
are all named vcl_*. Your own subroutines cannot start their name with vcl_.
Chapter 7VCL Basics
Page 113
7.1.1 Waiting State

Designed to improve response performance
The waiting state is reached when a request n arrives while a previous identical request 0 is being
handled by the backend. In this case, request 0 is set as busy and all subsequent requests n are
queued in a waiting list. If the fetched object from request 0 is cacheable, all n requests in the waiting
list call the lookup operation again. This retry will hopefully hit the desired object in cache. In this
way, only one request is sent to the backend.
The waiting state is designed to improve response performance. However, a counterproductive
scenario, namely request serialization, may occur if the fetched object is uncacheable, and so is
recursively the next request in the waiting list. This situation forces every single request in the
waiting list to be sent to the backend in a serial manner. Serialized requests should be avoided
because their performance is normally poorer than sending multiple requests in parallel. The built-in
vcl_backend_response subroutine avoids request serialization.
Page 114
Chapter 7VCL Basics
7.2 Detailed Varnish Request Flow for the Client Worker Thread
Figure 22: Detailed Varnish Request Flow for the Client Worker Thread
Chapter 7VCL Basics
Page 115
Figure 22 shows the detailed request flow diagram of the backend worker. This diagram details the
grayed grayed box in Figure 21.
Page 116
Chapter 7VCL Basics
7.3 The VCL Finite State Machine

Each request is processed separately
Each request is independent from others at any given time
States are related, but isolated
return(action); exits one state and instructs Varnish to proceed to the next state
Built-in VCL code is always present and appended below your own VCL
Before we begin looking at VCL code, it's worth trying to understand the fundamental concepts
behind VCL. When Varnish processes a request, it starts by parsing the request itself. Next, Varnish
separates the request method from headers, verifying that it's a valid HTTP request and so on.
When the basic parsing has completed, the very first policies are checked to make decisions. Policies
are a set of rules that the VCL code uses to make a decision. Policies help to answer questions such
as: should Varnish even attempt to find the requested resource in the cache? In this example, the
policies are in the vcl_recv subroutine.
Chapter 7VCL Basics
Page 117
7.4 VCL Syntax

//, # and /* foo */ for comments
Subroutines are declared with the sub keyword
No loops, state-limited variables
Terminating statements with a keyword for next action as argument of the return() function,
i.e.: return(action)
Domain-specific
Add as little or as much as you want
Starting with Varnish 4.0, each VCL file must start by declaring its version with a special vcl 4.0;
marker at the top of the file. If you have worked with a programming language or two before, the
basic syntax of Varnish should be reasonably straightforward. VCL is inspired mainly by C and Perl.
Blocks are delimited by curly braces, statements end with semicolons, and comments may be written
as in C, C++ or Perl according to your own preferences.
Subroutines in VCL neither take arguments, nor return values. Subroutines in VCL can exchange data
only through HTTP headers.
VCL has terminating statements, not traditional return values. Subroutines end execution when a
return(*action*) statement is made. The action tells Varnish what to do next. For example, "look
this up in cache", "do not look this up in the cache", or "generate an error message". To check which
actions are available for the built-in subroutines, you can look at Figure # or see the manual page of
VCL.
Warning
If you define your own subroutine and call it from one of the built-in subroutines, executing
return(foo) does not return execution from your custom subroutine to the default
function, but returns execution from VCL to Varnish.
Chapter 7VCL Basics
Page 118
7.5 VCL built-in functions

List of functions and their arguments:
regsub(str, regex, sub)
regsuball(str, regex, sub)
ban(exp)
return(action)
hash_data(input)
call subroutine
new()
synthetic(str)
set()
unset()
All functions are available in all subroutines, except the listed in the table below.
Table 14: Specific Function Availability
Function
Subroutines
hash_data
vcl_hash
new
vcl_init
synthetic
vcl_synth, vcl_backend_error
VCL offers a handful of simple to use built-in functions that allow you to modify strings, add bans,
restart the VCL state engine and return control from the VCL Run Time (VRT) environment to Varnish.
This book describes the most important functions in later sections, so the description at this point is
brief.
regsub() and regsuball() have the same syntax and does the almost same thing: They both
take a string str as input, search it with a regular-expression regex and replace it with another
string. The difference between regsub() and regsuball() is that the latter changes all
occurrences while the former only affects the first match.
The ban() function invalidates all objects in cache that match the expression exp with the ban
mechanism. banning and purging in detailed in the Cache Invalidation chapter.
Chapter 7VCL Basics
Page 119
7.6 Legal Return Actions

Table 15: VCL built-in subroutines and their legal returns at the frontend (client) side
subroutine
scope
deliver
vcl_deliver
client
vcl_hash
client
vcl_hit
client
vcl_miss
fetch
restart
hash
pass
pipe
synth
purge
lookup
x
x
client
vcl_pass
client
vcl_pipe
client
vcl_purge
client
vcl_recv
client
vcl_synth
client
x
x
x
x
Table 16: VCL built-in subroutines and their legal returns at the backend side, vcl.load, and
vcl.discard
subroutine
scope
abandon
retry
ok
vcl_backend_error
backend
vcl_backend_fetch
backend
backend
vcl_init
vcl.load
vcl_fini
vcl.discard
fail
x
x
The table above shows the VCL built-in subroutines and their legal returns. return() is a built-in
function that ends execution of the current VCL subroutine, and continue to the next action step in
the request handling state machine. Legal return actions are: lookup, synth, purge, pass, pipe, fetch,
deliver, hash, restart, retry, and abandon.
Note
Varnish 4 defines purge as a return action. This is contrary to Varnish 3, where purge is a
function.
Chapter 7VCL Basics
Page 120
7.7 Variables in VCL subroutines

Table 17: Variable Availability in VCL subroutines
subroutine
req.
bereq.
beresp.
vcl_backend_fetch
R/W
R/W
R/W
vcl_backend_error
R/W
R/W
vcl_recv
obj.
resp.
R/W
vcl_pipe
R/W
vcl_pass
R/W
vcl_hash
R/W
vcl_purge
R/W
vcl_miss
R/W
vcl_hit
R/W
vcl_deliver
R/W
vcl_synth
R/W
R/W
R/W
The State column lists the different states in a request work-flow. States are handled by subroutines,
which have a leading vcl_ prefix name.
The Variables columns list the prefix of the available variables. Most but not all of the prefixed
variables are readable (R) or writable (W) at the given state. To have a detailed availability of each
variable, refer to the VCL man page by typing: man vcl.
Table 17 shows the availability of variables in different states of the Varnish finite state machine. In
addition to the variable prefixes in Table 17, there are other three variables prefixes; client.*,
server.*, and storage.*, which are accessible from all subroutines at the frontend (client) side.
Another variable is now, which is accessible from all subroutines.
These additional prefixes and variable are practically accessible everywhere.
Remember that changes made to beresp. variables are stored in obj. afterwards. And the
resp. variables are copies of what is about to be returned to the client. The values of resp.
variables come possibly from obj..
A change to beresp. variables, in other words, affects obj. and resp. variables. Similar
semantics apply to req. and bereq. variables.
Variables belonging to the backend request (bereq.) are assigned with values from the original
request (req.). However, their values may slightly differ, because Varnish may modify HTTP requests
methods. For example, client requests with HEAD methods may be converted to backend requests
with GET methods.
Chapter 7VCL Basics
Page 121
Many but not all of the variables are self-explanatory. To get more information about a particular
variable, consult the VCL man page or ask the instructor at the course.
Page 122
Chapter 7VCL Basics
7.8 Summary of VCL

VCL provides a state machine for controlling Varnish
Each request is handled independently
Building a VCL file is done one line at a time
VCL is all about policy. By providing a state machine which you can hook into, VCL allows you to
affect the handling of any single request almost anywhere in the execution chain.
This provides pros and cons as any other programming language. This book is not a complete
reference guide to how you can deal with every possible scenario in VCL, but on the other hand, if
you master the basics of VCL you can solve complex problems that nobody has thought about
before. And you can usually do it without requiring too many different sources of documentation.
Whenever you are working on VCL, you should think of what that exact line you are writing has to do.
The best VCL is built by having many independent sections that do not interfere with each other
more than what they have to.
Remember that there is a built-in VCL. If your own VCL code does not reach a return statement,
the built-in VCL subroutine is executed after yours. If you just need a little modification of a
subroutine, you can use the code from builtin.vcl as a template.
Chapter 8VCL Built-in Subroutines
Page 123
8 VCL Built-in Subroutines

Cover the VCL built-in subroutines: vcl_recv, vcl_pass, vcl_backend_fetch,
vcl_backend_response, vcl_hash, vcl_hit, vcl_miss, vcl_deliver, and vcl_synth
If your VCL code does not reach a return statement, the built-in VCL subroutine is executed
after yours.
This chapter covers the VCL subroutines where you customize the behavior of Varnish. However, this
chapter does not define caching policies. VCL subroutines can be used to: add custom headers,
change the appearance of the Varnish error message, add HTTP redirect features in Varnish, purge
content, and define what parts of a cached object is unique.
After this chapter, you should know what all the VCL subroutines can be used for. You should also be
ready to dive into more advanced features of Varnish and VCL.
Note
It is strongly advised to let the default built-in subroutines whenever is possible. The built-in
subroutines are designed with safety in mind, which often means that they handle any flaws
in your VCL code in a reasonable manner.
Tip
Looking at the code of built-in subroutines can help you to understand how to build your own
VCL
code.
Built-in
subroutines
are
in
the
file
/usr/share/doc/varnish/examples/builtin.vcl.gz
or
{varnish-source-code}/bin/varnishd/builtin.vcl. The first location may change
depending on your distro.
Page 124
8.1 VCL vcl_recv

Normalize client-input
Pick a backend web server
Re-write client-data for web applications
Decide caching policy based on client-input
Access Control Lists (ACL)
Security barriers, e.g., against SQL injection attacks
Fixing mistakes, e.g., index.htlm -> index.html
vcl_recv is the first VCL subroutine executed, right after Varnish has parsed the client request into
its basic data structure. vcl_recv has four main uses:
1. Modifying the client data to reduce cache diversity. E.g., removing any leading "www." in the
Host: header.
2. Deciding which web server to use.
3. Deciding caching policy based on client data. E.g., not caching POST requests, only caching
specific URLs, etc.
4. Executing re-write rules needed for specific web applications.
In vcl_recv you can perform the following terminating actions:
pass: It passes over the cache lookup, but it executes the rest of the Varnish request flow. pass does
not store the response from the backend in the cache.
pipe: This action creates a full-duplex pipe that forwards the client request to the backend without
looking at the content. Backend replies are forwarded back to the client without caching the content.
Since Varnish does no longer try to map the content to a request, any subsequent request sent over
the same keep-alive connection will also be piped. Piped requests do not appear in any log.
hash: It looks up the request in cache.
purge: It looks up the request in cache in order to remove it.
synth - Generate a synthetic response from Varnish. This synthetic response is typically a web page
with an error message. synth may also be used to redirect client requests.
It's also common to use vcl_recv to apply some security measures. Varnish is not a replacement
for intrusion detection systems, but can still be used to stop some typical attacks early. Simple
Access Control Lists (ACLs) can be applied in vcl_recv too.
For further discussion about security in VCL, take a look at the Varnish Security Firewall (VSF)
application at https://github.com/comotion/VSF. The VSF supports Varnish 3 and above. You may
also be interested to look at the Security.vcl project at https://github.com/comotion/security.vcl. The
Security.vcl project, however, supports only Varnish 3.x.
Page 125
Tip
The built-in vcl_recv subroutine may not cache all what you want, but often it's better not
to cache some content instead of delivering the wrong content to the wrong user. There are
exceptions, of course, but if you can not understand why the default VCL does not let you
cache some content, it is almost always worth it to investigate why instead of overriding it.
Page 126
8.1.1 Built-in: vcl_recv

sub vcl_recv {
if (req.method == "PRI") {
/* We do not support SPDY or HTTP/2.0 */
return (synth(405));
}
if (req.method != "GET" &&
req.method != "HEAD" &&
req.method != "PUT" &&
req.method != "POST" &&
req.method != "TRACE" &&
req.method != "OPTIONS" &&
req.method != "DELETE") {
/* Non-RFC2616 or CONNECT which is weird. */
return (pipe);
}
if (req.method != "GET" && req.method != "HEAD") {
/* We only deal with GET and HEAD by default */
return (pass);
}
if (req.http.Authorization || req.http.Cookie) {
/* Not cacheable by default */
return (pass);
}
return (hash);
}
The built-in VCL for vcl_recv is designed to ensure a safe caching policy even with no
modifications in VCL. It has two main uses:
1. Only handle recognized HTTP methods.
2. Cache GET and HEAD. Policies for no caching data is to be defined in your VCL.
Built-in VCL code is executed right after any user-defined VCL code, and is always present. You can
not remove it. However, the default VCL code will not execute if you use one of the terminating
actions: pass, pipe, hash, or synth. These terminating actions return control from the VRT (VCL
Run-Time) to Varnish.
For a well-behaving Varnish server, most of the logic in the default VCL is needed, and care should be
taken when vcl_recv is terminated. Consider either replicating all the built-in VCL logic in your own
VCL code, or let your client requests be handled by the built-in VCL code.
Page 127
8.1.2 Example: Basic Device Detection

One way of serving different content for mobile devices and desktop browsers is to run some simple
parsing on the User-Agent header. The following VCL code is an example to create custom headers.
These custom headers differentiate mobile devices from desktop computers.
sub vcl_recv {
if (req.http.User-Agent ~ "iPad" ||
req.http.User-Agent ~ "iPhone" ||
req.http.User-Agent ~ "Android") {
set req.http.X-Device = "mobile";
} else {
set req.http.X-Device = "desktop";
}
}
You
can
read
more
about
different
types
of
device
https://www.varnish-cache.org/docs/trunk/users-guide/devicedetection.html
detection
at
This simple VCL will create a request header called X-Device which will contain either mobile or
desktop. The web server can then use this header to determine what page to serve, and inform
Varnish about it through Vary: X-Device.
It might be tempting to just send Vary: User-Agent, but that requires you to normalize the
User-Agent header itself because there are many tiny variations in the description of similar
User-Agents. This normalization, however, leads to loss of detailed information of the browser. If you
pass the User-Agent header without normalization, the cache size may drastically inflate because
Varnish would keep possibly hundreds of different variants per object and per tiny User-Agent
variants. For more information on the Vary HTTP response header, see the Vary section.
Note
If you do use Vary: X-Device, you might want to send Vary: User-Agent to the users
after Varnish has used it. Otherwise, intermediary caches will not know that the page looks
different for different devices.
Page 128
8.1.3 Exercise: Rewrite URLs and Host headers

1. Copy the original Host-header (req.http.Host) and URL (req.url) to two new request
headers: req.http.x-host and req.http.x-url.
2. Ensure that www.example.com and example.com are cached as one, using regsub().
3. Rewrite all URLs under http://sport.example.com to http://example.com/sport/. For example:
http://sport.example.com/article1.html to http://example.com/sport/article1.html.
4. Use varnishlog to verify the result.
Extra: Make sure / and /index.html is cached as one object. How can you verify that it is, without
changing the content?
Extra 2: Make the redirection work for any domain with sport. at the front. E.g: sport.example.com,
sport.foobar.example.net, sport.blatti, etc.
For
the
first
point,
use
set
req.http.headername
set req.http.headername = regsub(...);.
"value";
or
In point 2, change req.http.host by calling the function regsub(str, regex, sub). str is the
input string, in this case, req.http.host. regex is the regular-expression matching whatever
content you need to change. Use ^ to match what begins with www, and \. to finish the
regular-expression, i.e. ^www.. sub is what you desire to change it with, an empty string "" can be
used to remove what matches regex.
In point 3, you can check for host headers with a specific domain name:
if (req.http.host == "sport.example.com"). An alternative is to check for all hosts that start
with sport, regardless the domain name: if (req.http.host ~ "^sport\."). In the first case,
setting the host header is straight forward: set req.http.host = "example.com". In the second
case, you can set the host header by removing the string that precedes the domain name
set req.http.host = regsub(req.http.host,"^sport\.", ""); Finally, you rewrite the
URL in this way: set req.url = regsub(req.url, "^", "/sport");.
To simulate client requests, you can issue the following command:
http -p hH --proxy=http:http://localhost sport.example.com/article1.html
To verify your result, you can issue the following command:
``varnishlog -i ReqHeader,ReqURL``.
Tip
Remember that man vcl contains a reference manual with the syntax and details of
functions such as regsub(str, regex, sub). We recommend you to leave the default VCL
file untouched, and create a new file for your VCL code. Remember to update the location of
the VCL file in the Varnish configuration file, and restart Varnish.
Page 129
Page 130
8.1.4 Solution: Rewrite URLs and Host headers

http -p hH --proxy=http:http://localhost sport.example.com/index.html
varnishlog -i ReqHeader,ReqURL
sub vcl_recv {
set req.http.x-host = req.http.host;
set req.http.x-url = req.url;
set req.http.host = regsub(req.http.host, "^www\.", "");
/* Alternative 1 */
if (req.http.host == "sport.example.com") {
set req.http.host = "example.com";
set req.url = "/sport" + req.url;
}
/* Alternative 2 */
if (req.http.host ~ "^sport\.") {
set req.http.host = regsub(req.http.host,"^sport\.", "");
set req.url = regsub(req.url, "^", "/sport");
}
}
Page 131
8.2 VCL vcl_pass

Called upon entering pass mode
sub vcl_pass {
return (fetch);
}
The vcl_pass subroutine is called after a previous subroutine returns the pass action. This actions
sets the request in pass mode. vcl_pass typically serves as an important catch-all for features you
have implemented in vcl_hit and vcl_miss.
vcl_pass may return three different actions: fetch, synth, or restart. When returning the fetch action,
the ongoing request proceeds in pass mode. Fetched objects from requests in pass mode are not
cached, but passed to the client. The synth and restart return actions call their corresponding
subroutines.
Page 132
8.2.1 hit-for-pass
Used when an object should not be cached
hit-for-pass object instead of fetched object
Has TTL
Some requested objects should not be cached. A typical example is when a requested page contains
a Set-Cookie response header, and therefore it must be delivered only to the client that requests
it. In this case, you can tell Varnish to create a hit-for-pass object and stores it in the cache, instead of
storing the fetched object. Subsequent requests are processed in pass mode.
When an object should not be cached, the beresp.uncacheable variable is set to true. As a result,
the cacher process keeps a hash reference to the hit-for-pass object. In this way, the lookup operation
for requests translating to that hash find a hit-for-pass object. Such requests are handed over to the
vcl_pass subroutine, and proceed in pass mode.
As any other cached object, hit-for-pass objects have a TTL. Once the object's TTL has elapsed, the
object is removed from the cache.
Page 133
8.3 VCL vcl_backend_fetch and vcl_backend_response

Sanitize server-response
Override cache duration
Figure 23: Varnish Request Flow for the Backend Worker Thread.
Figure 23 shows the vcl_backend_fetch, vcl_backend_response and vcl_backend_error
subroutines. These subroutines are the backend-counterparts to vcl_recv. You can use data
provided by the client in vcl_recv or even vcl_backend_fetch to decide on caching policy. An
important difference is that you have access to bereq.* variables in vcl_backend_fetch.
vcl_backend_fetch can be called from vcl_miss or vcl_pass. When vcl_backend_fetch is
called from vcl_miss, the fetched object may be cached. If vcl_backend_fetch is called from
vcl_pass, the fetched object is not cached even if obj.ttl or obj.keep variables are greater
than zero.
Page 134
A relevant variable is bereq.uncacheable. This variable indicates whether the object requested
from the backend may be cached or not. However, all objects from pass requests are never cached,
regardless the bereq.uncacheable variable.
vcl_backend_fetch has two possible terminating actions, fetch or abandon. The fetch action sends
the request to the backend, whereas the abandon action calls the vcl_synth routine. The built-in
vcl_backend_fetch subroutine simply returns the fetch action. The backend response is
processed by vcl_backend_response or vcl_backend_error.
Figure 24 shows that vcl_backend_response may terminate with one of the following actions:
deliver, abandon, or retry. The deliver terminating action may or may not insert the object into the
cache depending on the response of the backend.
Backends might respond with a 304 HTTP headers. 304 responses happen when the requested
object has not been modified since the timestamp If-Modified-Since in the HTTP header. If the
request hits a non fresh object (see Figure 2), Varnish adds the If-Modified-Since header with
the value of t_origin to the request and sends it to the backend.
304 responses do not contain a message-body. Thus, Varnish tries to steal the body from cache,
merge it with the header response and deliver it. This process updates the attributes of the cached
object.
Typical tasks performed in vcl_backend_fetch or vcl_backend_response include:
Overriding cache time for certain URLs
Stripping Set-Cookie headers that are not needed
Stripping bugged Vary headers
Adding helper-headers to the object for use in banning (more information in later sections)
Applying other caching policies
Page 135
8.3.1 vcl_backend_response
built-in vcl_backend_response
sub vcl_backend_response {
if (beresp.ttl <= 0s ||
beresp.http.Set-Cookie ||
beresp.http.Surrogate-control ~ "no-store" ||
(!beresp.http.Surrogate-Control &&
beresp.http.Cache-Control ~ "no-cache|no-store|private") ||
beresp.http.Vary == "*") {
/*
* Mark as "Hit-For-Pass" for the next 2 minutes
*/
set beresp.ttl = 120s;
set beresp.uncacheable = true;
}
return (deliver);
}
The vcl_backend_response built-in subroutine is designed to avoid caching in conditions that are
most probably undesired. For example, it avoids caching responses with cookies, i.e., responses with
Set-cookie HTTP header field. This built-in subroutine also avoids request serialization described in
the Waiting State section.
To avoid request serialization, beresp.uncacheable is set to true, which in turn creates a
hit-for-pass object. The hit-for-pass section explains in detail this object type.
If you still decide to skip the built-in vcl_backend_response subroutine by having your own and
returning deliver, be sure to never set beresp.ttl to 0. If you skip the built-in subroutine and
set 0 as TTL value, you are effectively removing objects from cache that could eventually be used to
avoid request serialization.
Note
Varnish 3.x has a hit_for_pass return action. In Varnish 4, this action is achieved by setting
beresp.uncacheable to true. The hit-for-pass section explains this in more detail.
Page 136
8.3.2 The Initial Value of beresp.ttl

Before Varnish runs vcl_backend_response, the beresp.ttl variable has already been set to a
value. beresp.ttl is initialized with the first value it finds among:
The s-maxage variable in the Cache-Control response header field
The max-age variable in the Cache-Control response header field
The Expires response header field
The default_ttl parameter.
Only the following status codes will be cached by default:
200: OK
203: Non-Authoritative Information
300: Multiple Choices
301: Moved Permanently
302: Moved Temporarily
304: Not modified
307: Temporary Redirect
410: Gone
404: Not Found
You can cache other status codes than the ones listed above, but you have to set the beresp.ttl
to a positive value in vcl_backend_response. Since beresp.ttl
is set before
vcl_backend_response is executed, you can modify the directives of the Cache-Control header
field without affecting beresp.ttl, and vice versa. Cache-Control directives are defined in
RFC7234 Section 5.2.
A backend response may include the response header field of maximum age for shared caches
s-maxage. This field overrides all max-age values throughout all Varnish servers in a multiple
Varnish-server
setup.
For
example,
if
the
backend
sends
Cache-Control: max-age=300, s-maxage=3600, all Varnish installations will cache objects with
an Age value less or equal to 3600 seconds. This also means that responses with Age values
between 301 and 3600 seconds are not cached by the clients' web browser, because Age is greater
than max-age.
A sensible approach is to use the s-maxage directive to instruct Varnish to cache the response.
Then, remove the s-maxage directive using regsub() in vcl_backend_response before
delivering the response. In this way, you can safely use s-maxage as the cache duration for Varnish
servers, and set max-age as the cache duration for clients.
Page 137
Warning
Bear in mind that removing or altering the Age response header field may affect how
responses are handled downstream. The impact of removing the Age field depends on the
HTTP implementation of downstream intermediaries or clients.
For example, imagine that you have a three Varnish-server serial setup. If you remove the
Age field in the first Varnish server, then the second Varnish server will assume Age=0. In this
case, you might inadvertently be delivering stale objects to your client.
Page 138
8.3.3 Example: Setting TTL of .jpg URLs to 60 seconds

if (bereq.url ~ "\.jpg$") {
}
}
The above example caches all URLs ending with .jpg for 60 seconds. Keep in mind that the built-in
VCL is still executed. That means that images with a Set-Cookie field are not cached.
Page 139
8.3.4 Example: Cache .jpg for 60 seconds only if s-maxage is not present
if (beresp.http.cache-control !~ "s-maxage" && bereq.url ~ "\.jpg$") {
}
}
The purpose of the above example is to allow a gradual migration to using a backend-controlled
caching policy. If the backend does not supply s-maxage, and the URL is a jpg file, then Varnish sets
beresp.ttl to 60 seconds.
The Cache-Control response header field can contain a number of directives. Varnish parses this
field and looks for s-maxage and max-age.
By default, Varnish sets beresp.ttl to the value of s-maxage if found. If s-maxage is not found,
Varnish uses the value max-age. If neither exists, Varnish uses the Expires response header field
to set the TTL. If none of those header fields exist, Varnish uses the default TTL, which is 120
seconds.
The default parsing and TTL assignment are done before vcl_backend_response is executed. The
TTL changing process is recorded in the TTL tag of varnishlog.
Page 140
8.3.5 Exercise: Avoid caching a page

Write a VCL which avoids caching the index page at all. It should cover both accessing / and
/index.html
When trying this out, remember that Varnish keeps the Host-header in req.http.host and the
part after the hostname in req.url. For http://www.example.com/index.html, the http:// part is not
seen by Varnish at all, but req.http.host has the value of www.example.com and req.url the
value of /index.html. Note how the leading / is included in req.url.
Page 141
8.3.6 Solution: Avoid caching a page

// Suggested solution A
sub vcl_recv {
if (req.url ~ "^/index\.html" || req.url ~ "^/$") {
return(pass);
}
}
// Suggested solution B
sub vcl_backend_fetch {
if (bereq.url ~ "^/index\.html" || bereq.url ~ "^/$") {
set bereq.uncacheable = true;
return(fetch);
}
}
Usually it is most convenient to do as much as possible in vcl_recv. The usage of
bereq.uncacheable in vcl_backend_fetch creates a hit-for-pass object. See the hit-for-pass
section for detailed description about this type of object.
Page 142
8.3.7 Exercise: Either use s-maxage or set TTL by file type

Write a VCL that:
uses Cache-Control: s-maxage when present,
caches .jpg for 30 seconds if s-maxage is not present,
caches .html for 10 seconds if s-maxage isn't present, and
removes the Set-Cookie header field if s-maxage OR the above rules indicate that Varnish
should cache.
Tip
Divide and conquer! Most somewhat complex VCL tasks are easily solved when you divide the
tasks into smaller problems and solve them individually. Try solving each part of the exercise
by itself first.
Note
Varnish automatically parses s-maxage for you, so you only need to check if it is there or not.
Remember that if s-maxage is present, Varnish has already used it to set beresp.ttl.
Page 143
8.3.8 Solution: Either use s-maxage or set ttl by file type

if (beresp.http.cache-control !~ "s-maxage") {
if (bereq.url ~ "\.jpg(\?|$)") {
unset beresp.http.Set-Cookie;
}
if (bereq.url ~ "\.html(\?|$)") {
}
} else {
if (beresp.ttl > 0s) {
}
}
}
There are many ways to solve this exercise, and this solution is only one of them. The first part
checks that s-maxage is not present, then handles .jpg and .html files - including cookie removal.
The second part checks if s-maxage caused Varnish to set a positive TTL and consider it cacheable.
Then, we remove the Set-Cookie header field.
Page 144
8.4 VCL vcl_hash

Defines what is unique about a request.
Executed after vcl_recv returns a hash action keyword.
sub vcl_hash {
hash_data(req.url);
if (req.http.host) {
hash_data(req.http.host);
} else {
hash_data(server.ip);
}
return (lookup);
}
vcl_hash defines the hash key to be used for a cached object. Hash keys differentiate one cached
object from another. The default VCL for vcl_hash adds the hostname or IP address, and the
requested URL to the cache hash.
One usage of vcl_hash is to add a user-name in the cache hash to identify user-specific data.
However, be warned that caching user-data should only be done cautiously. A better alternative
might be to hash cache objects per session instead.
The vcl_hash subroutine returns the lookup action keyword. Unlike other action keywords,
lookup is an operation, not a subroutine. Depending on what lookup finds in the cache, it has four
possible outcomes: hit, miss, hit-for-pass, or purge.
When the lookup operation does not match any hash, it creates an object with a busy flag and inserts
it in cache. Then, the request is sent to the vcl_miss subroutine. The busy flag is removed once the
request is handled, and the object is updated with the response from the backend.
Subsequent similar requests that hit busy flagged objects are sent into a waiting list. This waiting list
is designed to improve response performance, and it is explain the Waiting State section.
Note
One cache hash may refer to one or many object variations. Object variations are created
based on the Vary header field. It is a good practice to keep several variations under one
cache hash, than creating one hash per variation.
Page 145
8.5 VCL vcl_hit

Executed after the lookup operation, called by vcl_hash, finds (hits) an object in the cache.
sub vcl_hit {
if (obj.ttl >= 0s) {
// A pure unadultered hit, deliver it
return (deliver);
}
if (obj.ttl + obj.grace > 0s) {
// Object is in grace, deliver it
// Automatically triggers a background fetch
return (deliver);
}
// fetch & deliver once we get the result
return (fetch);
}
The vcl_hit subroutine typically terminate by calling return() with one of the following
keywords: deliver, restart, or synth.
deliver returns control to vcl_deliver if the TTL + grace time of an object has not elapsed.
If the elapsed time is more than the TTL, but less than the TTL + grace time, then deliver calls
for background fetch in parallel to vcl_deliver. The background fetch is an asynchronous call that
inserts a fresher requested object in the cache. Grace time is explained in the Grace Mode section.
restart starts again the transaction, and increases the restart counter. If the number of restarts is
higher than max_restarts counter, Varnish emits a guru meditation error.
synth(status code, reason) returns the specified status code to the client and abandon the
request.
Page 146
8.6 VCL vcl_miss

Subroutine called if a requested object is not found by the lookup operation.
Contains policies to decide whether or not to attempt to retrieve the document from the
backend, and which backend to use.
sub vcl_miss {
return (fetch);
}
The subroutines vcl_hit and vcl_miss are closely related. It is rare that you customize them,
because modification of HTTP request headers is typically done in vcl_recv. However, if you do not
wish to send a X-Varnish header to the backend server, you can remove it in vcl_miss or
vcl_pass. For that case, you can use unset bereq.http.x-varnish;.
Page 147
8.7 VCL vcl_deliver

Common last exit point for all request workflows, except requests through vcl_pipe
Often used to add and remove debug-headers
sub vcl_deliver {
return (deliver);
}
The vcl_deliver subroutine is simple, and it is also very useful to modify the output of Varnish. If
you need to remove a header, or add one that is not supposed to be stored in the cache,
vcl_deliver is the place to do it.
The variables most useful and common to modify in vcl_deliver are:
resp.http.*
Headers that are sent to the client. They can be set and unset.
resp.status
The status code (200, 404, 503, etc).
resp.reason
The HTTP status message that is returned to the client.
obj.hits
The count of cache-hits on this object. Therefore, a value of 0 indicates a miss. This variable can
be evaluated to easily reveal whether a response comes from a cache hit or miss.
req.restarts
The number of restarts issued in VCL - 0 if none were made.
Page 148
8.8 VCL vcl_synth

Used to generate content from within Varnish, without talking to the backend
Error messages go here by default
Other use cases: Redirecting users (301/302 redirects)
sub vcl_synth {
set resp.http.Content-Type = "text/html; charset=utf-8";
set resp.http.Retry-After = "5";
synthetic( {"<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<title>"} + resp.status + " " + resp.reason + {"</title>
</head>
<body>
<h1>Error "} + resp.status + " " + resp.reason + {"</h1>
<p>"} + resp.reason + {"</p>
<h3>Guru Meditation:</h3>
<p>XID: "} + req.xid + {"</p>
<hr>
<p>Varnish cache server</p>
</body>
</html>
"} );
return (deliver);
}
To make a distinction between VCL synthetic responses and internally generated errors (when trying
to fetch an object), there are two subroutines that handle errors in Varnish. One is vcl_synth, and
the other is vcl_backend_error. To return control to vcl_synth,call the synth() function like
this:
return (synth(status_code, "reason"));
Note that the syntax synth is not a keyword, but a function with arguments.
You must explicitly return the status code and reason arguments for vcl_synth. Setting
headers on synthetic response bodies are done on resp.http.
Note
Note how you can use {" and "} to make multi-line strings. This is not limited to the
synthetic() function, but can be used anywhere.
Page 149
Note
A vcl_synth defined object is never stored in cache, contrary to a vcl_backend_error
defined object, which may end up in cache. vcl_synth and vcl_backend_error replace
vcl_error from Varnish 3.
Page 150
8.8.1 Example: Redirecting requests with vcl_synth

sub vcl_recv {
if (req.http.host == "www.example.com") {
set req.http.Location = "http://example.com" + req.url;
return (synth(750, "Permanently moved"));
}
}
sub vcl_synth {
if (resp.status == 750) {
set resp.http.location = req.http.Location;
set resp.status = 301;
return (deliver);
}
}
Redirecting with VCL is fairly easy and fast. Basic HTTP redirects work when the HTTP response is
either 301 Moved Permanently or 302 Found. These response have a Location header field telling the
web browser where to redirect.
Note
The 301 response can affect how browsers prioritize history and how search engines treat the
content. 302 responses are temporary and do not affect search engines as 301 responses do.
8.9 Exercise: Modify the HTTP response header fields

Add a header stating either HIT or MISS
"Rename" the Age header to X-Age.
Page 151
Page 152
8.9.1 Solution: Modify the HTTP response header fields

sub vcl_deliver {
set resp.http.X-Age = resp.http.Age;
unset resp.http.Age;
if (obj.hits > 0) {
set resp.http.X-Cache = "HIT";
} else {
set resp.http.X-Cache = "MISS";
}
}
It is safer to make sure a variable has a sensible value before using it to make a string. Therefore, we
check that obj.hits > 0 (and not just obj.hits != 0) before using it.
There have been bugs in string-conversion. Those bugs happened when the variable to be converted
to string had an unexpected value. This applies to all variables and all languages for that matter.
8.10 Exercise: Change the error message

Make the default error message more friendly.
Page 153
Page 154
8.10.1 Solution: Change the error message

/* Change your backend configuration to provoke a 503 error */
backend default {
.host = "127.0.0.1";
.port = "8081";
}
/* Customize error responses */
sub vcl_backend_error {
if (beresp.status == 503){
set beresp.status = 200;
synthetic( {"
<html><body></body></html>
"} );
return (deliver);
}
}
The suggested solution forces a 503 error by misconfiguring .port in the default backend.
Chapter 9Cache Invalidation
Page 155
9 Cache Invalidation
Cache invalidation is an important part of your cache policy
Varnish will automatically invalidate expired objects
You can however pro-actively invalidate objects with Varnish
You should define those rules before caching objects in production environments
There are four mechanisms to invalidate caches in Varnish:
1. HTTP PURGE
Use the vcl_purge subroutine
Invalidate caches explicitly using objects' hashes
vcl_purge is called via return(purge) from vcl_recv
vcl_purge removes all variants of an object from cache, freeing up memory
The restart return action can be used to update immediately a purged object
2. Banning
Use the built-in function ban(expression)
Invalidates objects in cache that match the regular-expression
Does not necessarily free up memory at once
Also accessible from the management interface
3. Force Cache Misses
Use req.hash_always_miss in vcl_recv
If set to true, Varnish disregards any existing objects and always (re)fetches from the
backend
May create multiple objects as side effect
Does not necessarily free up memory at once
4. Hashtwo -> Varnish Plus only!
For websites with the need for cache invalidation at a very large scale
Varnish Software's implementation of surrogate keys
Flexible cache invalidation based on cache tags
Page 156
Which to use when?

Whenever you deal with a cache, you have to eventually deal with the challenge of cache
invalidation, or refreshing content. There are many motives behind such a task. Varnish addresses
the problem in several slightly different ways.
To decide which cache invalidation mechanism to use, answer the following questions:
Am I invalidating one specific object, or many?
Do I need to free up memory, or just replace the content?
How long time does it take to replace the content?
Is this a regular task, or a one-off task?
The rest of the chapter gives you the information to pickup the most suitable mechanisms.
Page 157
9.1 HTTP PURGE

If you know exactly what to remove, use HTTP PURGE
Frees up memory, removes all Vary:-variants of the object
Leaves it to the next client to refresh the content
Often combined with return(restart);
A purge is what happens when you pick out an object from the cache and discard it along with its
variants. A resource can exist in multiple Vary:-variants. For example, you could have a desktop
version, a tablet version and a smartphone version of your site, and use the Vary HTTP header field
in combination with device detection to store different variants of the same resource.
Usually a purge is invoked through HTTP with the method PURGE. A HTTP PURGE is another request
method just as HTTP GET. Actually, you can call the PURGE method whatever you like, but PURGE
has become the de-facto naming standard. Squid, for example, uses the PURGE method name for
the same purpose.
Purges apply to a specific object, since they use the same lookup operation as in vcl_hash.
Therefore, purges cannot use regular-expressions. A positive effect is that purges find and remove
objects really fast!
The down-side of using PURGE is that you evict content from cache before you know if Varnish can
fetch a new copy from the backend. That means that if you purge some objects and the backend is
down, Varnish will end up having no copy of the content.
Page 158
9.1.1 VCL vcl_purge

You may add actions to be executed once the object and its variants is purged
Called after the purge has been executed
sub vcl_purge {
return (synth(200, "Purged"));
}
Note
Cache invalidation with purges is done via return (purge); from vcl_recv in Varnish 4.
The purge; keyword from Varnish 3 has been retired.
Page 159
9.1.2 Example: PURGE

In order to support purging in Varnish, you need the following VCL in place.
acl purgers {
"127.0.0.1";
"192.168.0.0"/24;
}
sub vcl_recv {
# allow PURGE from localhost and 192.168.0...
if (req.method == "PURGE") {
if (!client.ip ~ purgers) {
}
return (purge);
}
}
Test your VCL by issuing::
http -p hH --proxy=http:http://localhost PURGE www.example.com
acl is a reserved keyword that is used to create Access Control Lists (ACLs). ACLs are used to control
which client IP addresses are allowed to purge cached objects.
Note the purge return action in vcl_recv. This action ends execution of vcl_recv and jumps to
vcl_hash. When vcl_hash calls return(lookup), Varnish purges the object and then calls
vcl_purge.
Page 160
9.1.3 Exercise: PURGE an article from the backend

Send a PURGE request to Varnish from your backend server after an article is published.
Simulate the article publication.
The result is that the article is evicted in Varnish.
Now you know that purging can be as easy as sending a specific HTTP request. You are provided with
article.php, which fakes an article. It is recommended to create a separate php file to implement
purging.
article.php
<?php
header("Cache-Control: public, must-revalidate, max-age=3600, s-maxage=3600");
$date = new DateTime();
$now = $date->format( DateTime::RFC2822 );
?>
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN"
"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml">
<head></head>
<body>
<h1>This is an article, cached for 1 hour</h1>
<h2>Now is <?php echo $now; ?></h2>
<a href="<?=$_SERVER['PHP_SELF']?>">Refresh this page</a>
</body>
</html>
Tip
Remember to place your php files under /var/www/html/.
9.1.4 Solution: PURGE an article from the backend

purgearticle.php
<?php
header( 'Content-Type: text/plain' );
header( 'Cache-Control: max-age=0' );
$hostname = 'localhost';
$port
= 80;
$URL
= '/article.php';
$debug
= true;
print "Updating the article in the database ...\n";
purgeURL( $hostname, $port, $URL, $debug );
function purgeURL( $hostname, $port, $purgeURL, $debug )
{
$finalURL = sprintf(
"http://%s:%d%s", $hostname, $port, $purgeURL
);
print( "Purging ${finalURL}\n" );
$curlOptionList = array(
CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER
CURLOPT_CUSTOMREQUEST
CURLOPT_HEADER
CURLOPT_NOBODY
CURLOPT_URL
CURLOPT_CONNECTTIMEOUT_MS
);
=>
=>
=>
=>
=>
=>
true,
'PURGE',
true ,
true,
$finalURL,
2000
$fd = false;
if( $debug == true ) {
print "\n---- Curl debug -----\n";
$fd = fopen("php://output", 'w+');
$curlOptionList[CURLOPT_VERBOSE] = true;
$curlOptionList[CURLOPT_STDERR] = $fd;
}
$curlHandler = curl_init();
curl_setopt_array( $curlHandler, $curlOptionList );
curl_exec( $curlHandler );
curl_close( $curlHandler );
if( $fd !== false ) {
fclose( $fd );
}
Page 161
Page 162
}
?>
solution-purge-from-backend.vcl
acl purgers {
"127.0.0.1";
}
sub vcl_recv {
return (synth(405, "Not allowed."));
}
return (purge);
}
}
Page 163
Page 164
9.2 PURGE with restart return action

Start the VCL processing again from the top of vcl_recv
Any changes made are kept
acl purgers {
"127.0.0.1";
"192.168.0.0"/24;
}
sub vcl_recv {
# allow PURGE from localhost and 192.168.0...
if (req.restarts == 0) {
unset req.http.X-Purger;
}
return (synth(405, "Purging not allowed for " + client.ip));
}
return (purge);
}
}
sub vcl_purge {
set req.method = "GET";
set req.http.X-Purger = "Purged";
return (restart);
}
sub vcl_deliver {
if (req.http.X-Purger) {
set resp.http.X-Purger = req.http.X-Purger;
}
}
The restart return action allows Varnish to re-run the VCL state machine with different variables.
This is useful in combination with PURGE, in the way that a purged object can be immediately
restored with a new fetched object.
Every time a restart occurs, Varnish increments the req.restarts counter. If the number of
restarts is higher than the max_restarts parameter, Varnish emits a guru meditation error. In this
way, Varnish safe guards against infinite loops.
Page 165
Warning
Restarts are likely to cause a hit against the backend, so do not increase max_restarts
thoughtlessly.
Page 166
9.3 Banning
Use ban to prevent Varnish from serving a cached object
Does not free up memory
Examples in the varnishadm command line interface:
ban req.url ~ /foo
ban req.http.host ~ example.com && obj.http.content-type ~ text
ban.list
Example in VCL:
ban("req.url ~ /foo");
Example of VCL code to catch the HTTP BAN request method:
sub vcl_recv {
if (req.method == "BAN") {
ban("req.http.host == " + req.http.host +
" && req.url == " + req.url);
# Throw a synthetic page so the request won't go to the backend.
return(synth(200, "Ban added"));
}
}
Banning in the context of Varnish refers to adding a ban expression that prohibits Varnish to serve
certain objects from the cache. Ban expressions are more useful when using regular-expressions.
Bans work on objects already in the cache, i.e., it does not prevent new content from entering the
cache or being served. Cached objects that match a ban are marked as obsolete. Obsolete objects
are expunged by the expiry thread like any other object with obj.ttl == 0.
Ban expressions match against req.* or obj.* variables. Think about a ban expression as; "the
requested URL starts with /sport", or "the cached object has a Server-header matching lighttpd". You
can add ban expressions in VCL syntax via VCL code, HTTP request method, or CLI.
Ban expressions are inserted into a ban-list. The ban-list contains:
ID of the ban,
timestamp when the ban entered the ban list,
counter of objects that have matched the ban expression,
a C flag for completed that indicates whether a ban is invalid because it is duplicated,
the ban expression.
To inspect the current ban-list, issue the ban.list command in the CLI:
0xb75096d0 1318329475.377475
0xb7509610 1318329470.785875
10
20C
Page 167
obj.http.x-url ~ test0
obj.http.x-url ~ test1
Varnish tests bans whenever a request hits a cached object. A cached object is checked only against
bans added after the last checked ban. That means that each object checks against a ban expression
only once.
Bans that match only against obj.* are also checked by a background worker thread called the ban
lurker. The parameter ban_lurker_sleep controls how often the ban lurker tests obj.* bans. The
ban lurker can be disabled by setting ban_lurker_sleep to 0.
Note
You may accumulate a lot of ban expressions based in req.* variables if you have many
objects with long TTL that are seldom accessed. This accumulation occurs because bans are
kept until all cached objects have been checked against them. This might impact CPU usage
and thereby performance.
Therefore, we recommend you to avoid req.* variables in your ban expressions, and to use
obj.* variables instead. Ban expressions using only obj.* are called lurker-friendly bans.
Note
If the cache is completely empty, only the last added ban stays in the ban-list.
Tip
You can also execute ban expressions via the Varnish Administration Console (VAC).
Page 168
Figure 24: Executing ban expressions via the Varnish Administration Console (VAC).
Page 169
9.3.1 Lurker-Friendly Bans

Ban expressions that match only against obj.*
Evaluated asynchronously by the ban lurker thread
Similar to the concept of garbage collection
Ban expressions are checked in two cases: 1) when a request hits a cached object, or 2) when the
ban lurker wakes up. The first case is efficient only if you know that the cached objects to be banned
are frequently accessed. Otherwise, you might accumulate a lot of ban expressions in the ban-list
that are never checked. The second case is a better alternative because the ban lurker can help you
keep the ban list at a manageable size. Therefore, we recommend you to create ban expressions
that are checked by the ban lurker. Such ban expressions are called lurker-friendly bans.
Lurker-friendly ban expressions are those that use only obj.*, but not req.* variables. Since
lurker-friendly ban expressions lack of req.*, you might need to copy some of the req.* contents
into the obj structure. In fact, this copy operation is a mechanism to preserve the context of client
request in the cached object. For example, you may want to copy useful parts of the client context
such as the requested URL from req to obj.
Page 170
The following snippet shows an example on how to preserve the context of a client request in the
cached object:
set beresp.http.x-url = bereq.url;
}
sub vcl_deliver {
# The X-Url header is for internal use only
unset resp.http.x-url;
}
Now imagine that you just changed the blog post template. To invalidate all blog posts, you can then
issue a ban such as:
$ varnishadm ban 'obj.http.x-url ~ ^/blog'
Since it uses a lurker-friendly ban expression, the ban inserted in the ban-list will be gradually
evaluated against all cached objects until all blog posts are invalidated. The snippet below shows
how to insert the same expression into the ban-list in the vcl_recv subroutine:
sub vcl_recv {
# Assumes the ``X-Ban`` header is a regex,
# this might be a bit too simple.
ban("obj.http.x-url ~ " + req.http.x-ban);
return(synth(200, "Ban added"));
}
}
Page 171
9.4 Exercise: Write a VCL program using purge and ban

Write a VCL program that implements both cache invalidation mechanisms: purge and ban. The ban
method should use the request headers req.http.x-ban-url and req.http.x-ban-host, and it
should implement lurker-friendly bans.
To build further on this, you can also have a REFRESH HTTP method that fetches new content, using
req.hash_always_miss.
To test this exercise, you can use httpie. Example commands:
http -p hH PURGE http://localhost/testpage
http -p hH BAN http://localhost/ 'X-Ban-Url: .*html$' \
'X-Ban-Host: .*\.example\.com'
http -p hH REFRESH http://localhost/testpage
Page 172
9.4.1 Solution: Write a VCL program using purge and ban

sub vcl_recv {
return (purge);
}
ban("obj.http.x-url ~ " + req.http.x-ban-url +
" && obj.http.x-host ~ " + req.http.x-ban-host);
return (synth(200, "Ban added"));
}
if (req.method == "REFRESH") {
set req.method = "GET";
set req.hash_always_miss = true;
}
}
set beresp.http.x-url = bereq.url;
set beresp.http.x-host = bereq.http.host;
}
sub vcl_deliver {
unset resp.http.x-url; # Optional, for internal
unset resp.http.x-host; # use only...
}
Page 173
9.5 Force Cache Misses

set req.hash_always_miss = true; in vcl_recv
Causes Varnish to look the object up in cache, but ignore any copy it finds
Useful way to do a controlled refresh of a specific object
If the server is down, the cached object is left untouched
Depending on Varnish-version, it may leave extra copies in the cache
Useful to refresh slowly generated content
Setting a request in pass mode instructs Varnish to always ask a backend for content, without storing
the fetched object into cache. The vcl_purge removes old content, but what if the web server is
down?
Setting req.has_always_miss to true tells Varnish to look up the content in cache, but always
miss a hit. This means that Varnish first calls vcl_miss, then (presumably) fetches the content from
the backend, cache the updated object, and deliver the updated content.
The distinctive behavior of req.hash_always_miss occurs when the backend server is down or
unresponsive. In this case, the current cached object is untouched. Therefore, client requests that do
not enable req.hash_always_miss keep getting the old and untouched cached content.
Two important use-cases for using req.hash_always_miss are: 1) control who takes the penalty
for waiting around for the updated content (e.g. a script you control), and 2) ensure that content is
not evicted before there it is updated.
Note
Forcing cache misses do not evict old content. This means that causes Varnish to have
multiple copies of the content in cache. The newest copy is always used. If you cache your
content for a long period of time, the memory usage increases gradually.
Page 174
9.6 Hashtwo (Varnish Software Implementation of Surrogate

Keys)
Hashtwo is Varnish Software's implementation of surrogate keys
Cache invalidation based on cache tags
Adds patterns easily to be matched against
Highly scalable
Hashtwo is distributed as a VMOD for Varnish Plus only!
Install the Varnish Plus VMODs
The idea is that you can use any arbitrary string for cache invalidation. You can then key your cached
objects on, for example, product ID or article ID. In this way, when you update the price of a certain
product or a specific article, you have a key to evict all those objects from the cache.
So far, we have discussed purges and bans as mechanisms for cache invalidation. Two important
distinctions between them is that purges remove a single object (with its variants), whereas bans
perform cache invalidation based on matching expressions. However, there are cases where none of
these mechanisms are optimal.
Hashtwo creates a second hash key to link cached objects based on cache tags. This hash keys
provide the means to invalidate cached objects with common cache tags.
In practice, Hashtwo create cache invalidation patterns, which can be tested and invalidated
immediately just as purges do. In addition, Hashtwo is much more efficient than bans because of two
reasons: 1) looking up hash keys is much more efficient than traversing ban-lists, and 2) every time
you test a ban expression, it checks every object in the cache that is older than the ban itself.
The hashtwo VMOD is pre-built for supported versions and can be installed using regular package
managers from the Varnish Software repositories. Once the repository is in place you can issue the
following commands to install the VMOD:
On Debian or Ubuntu:
apt-get install libvmod-hashtwo
On Red Hat Enterprise Linux:
yum install libvmod-hashtwo
Finally, you can use this VMOD by importing it in your VCL code:
import hashtwo;
Page 175
9.6.1 VCL example using Hashtwo

On an e-commerce site the backend application issues a X-HashTwo HTTP header field for every
product that is referenced on that page. The header for a certain page might look like this:
HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Server: Apache/2.2.15
X-HashTwo: 8155054
X-HashTwo: 166412
X-HashTwo: 234323
The VCL example code:
import hashtwo;
# In this example the key to be purged is specified on the
# X-HashTwo-Purge header.
sub vcl_recv {
if (req.http.X-HashTwo-Purge) {
if (hashtwo.purge(req.http.X-HashTwo-Purge) != 0) {
return (purge);
} else {
return (synth(404, "Key not found"));
}
}
}
# Normally the backend is responsible for setting the header.
# If you were to do it in VCL it will look something like this:
set beresp.http.X-HashTwo = "secondary_hash_key";
}
In order to keep the web pages in sync with the database, a trigger is set up in the database. When a
stock keeping unit (SKU) is updated, an HTTP request towards the Varnish server is triggered. This
request invalidates every cached object with the matching X-HashTwo header:
GET / HTTP/1.1
Host: www.example.com
X-HashTwo-Purge: 166412
Note the X-HashTwo-Purge HTTP header field.
Based on the VCL code above, Varnish finds the objects and purge them. After that, Varnish
responds with:
Page 176
HTTP/1.1 200 Purged

Date: Thu, 24 Apr 2014 17:08:28 GMT
X-Varnish: 1990228115
Via: 1.1 Varnish
The objects are now cleared.
Warning
You should protect purges with ACLs from unauthorized hosts.
Page 177
9.7 Purge vs. Bans vs. Hashtwo vs. Cache Misses

Table 18: Bans vs. Purge vs. Hashtwo vs. Force Cache Misses
Bans
Purge
Hashtwo
Surrogate keys
Force Cache
Misses
Targets
Objects matching patterns
One specific
object (with all its
variants)
All objects with a

common
hashtwo key
One specific
object (with all its
variants)
Frees
memory
Not designed to free

memory, but it does free
memory after a request hits
an object in cache that
matches a ban expression,
or the ban luker invalidates
cached object.
Immediately
Immediately
No
Scalability
High when used properly,

e.g., when using lurker
friendly bans, having few
cached objects, having a
short ban-list, or writting
and triggering manually a
set of bans that target very
well identified objects.
High
High
No. Memory
usage increases
because old
objects are not
invalidated.
Flexibility
High
Low
High
Low
CLI
Yes
No
No
No
VCL
Yes
Yes
Yes
Yes
Availability
Varnish Cache
Varnish Cache
Varnish Plus only
Varnish Cache
There is rarely a need to pick only one solution, as you can implement many of them. Some
guidelines for selection, though:
Any frequent automated or semi-automated cache invalidation most likely require VCL changes
for the best effect.
If you need to invalidate more than one item at a time, consider to use bans or hashtwo.
If it takes a long time to pull content from the backend into Varnish, consider to use
req.hash_always_miss.
Page 178
Note
Purge and Hashtwo work very similar. The main difference is that they have they act on
different hash keys.
Chapter 10Saving a Request
Page 179
10 Saving a Request
This chapter is for the system administration course only
Table 19: Connotation of Saving a Request
Rescue
Directors
Health Checks
Grace Mode
Retry a Request
Economization
Protection
Tune Backend Properties
Access Control Lists (ACL)
Varnish offers many mechanisms to save a request. By saving a request we mean:

1. Rescue: mechanisms to handle requests when backends are in problematic situations.
2. Economization: mechanisms to spend less resources, i.e., send less requests to the backend.
3. Protection: mechanisms to restrict access cache invalidation from unauthorized entities.
Table 19 shows how different mechanisms are mapped to their saving meaning. This chapter
explains how to make your Varnish setup more robust by using these mechanisms.
Page 180
10.1 Directors
Loadable VMOD
Contains 1 or more backends
All backends must be known
Selection methods:
round-robin
fallback
random
seeded with a random number
seeded with a hash key
Round-robin director example:
vcl 4.0;
import directors;
// load the directors VMOD
backend one {
.port = "80";
}
backend two {
.host = "127.0.0.1";
.port = "81";
}
sub vcl_init {
new round_robin_director = directors.round_robin();
round_robin_director.add_backend(one);
round_robin_director.add_backend(two);
new random_director = directors.random();
random_director.add_backend(one, 10); # 2/3 to backend one
random_director.add_backend(two, 5);
# 1/3 to backend two
}
sub vcl_recv {
set req.backend_hint = round_robin_director.backend();
}
Page 181
Varnish can have several backends defined, and it can set them together into clusters for load
balancing purposes. Backend directors, usually just called directors, provide logical groupings of
similar web servers by re-using previously defined backends. A director must have a name.
There are several different director selection methods available, they are: random, round-robin,
fallback, and hash. The next backend to be selected depends on the selection method. The simplest
directors available are the round-robin and the random director.
A round-robin director takes only a backend list as argument. This director type picks the first
backend for the first request, then the second backend for the second request, and so on. Once the
last backend have been selected, backends are selected again from the top. If a health probe has
marked a backend as sick, a round-robin director skips it.
A fallback director will always pick the first backend unless it is sick, in which case it would pick the
next backend and so on. A director is also considered a backend so you can actually stack directors.
You could for instance have directors for active and passive clusters, and put those directors behind
a fallback director.
Random directors are seeded with either a random number or a hash key. Next section explains their
commonalities and differences.
Note
Health probes are explain in the Health Checks section.
Note
Directors are defined as loadable VMODs in Varnish 4. Please see the vmod_directors man
page for more information.
Page 182
10.1.1 Random Directors

Random director: seeded with a random number
Hash director: seeded with hash key from typically a URL or a client identity string
Hash director that uses client identity for backend selection
sub vcl_init {
new h = directors.hash();
h.add_backend(one, 1);
// backend 'one' with weight '1'
h.add_backend(two, 1);
// backend 'two' with weight '1'
}
sub vcl_recv {
// pick a backend based on the cookie header of the client
set req.backend_hint = h.backend(req.http.cookie);
}
The random director picks a backend randomly. It has one per-backend parameter called weight,
which provides a mechanism for balancing the selection of the backends. The selection mechanism
of the random director may be regarded as traffic distribution if the amount of traffic is the same per
request and per backend. The random director also has a director-wide counter called retries,
which increases every time the director selects a sick backend.
Both, the random and hash director select a backend randomly. The difference between these two is
the seed they use. The random director is seeded with a random number, whereas the hash director
is seeded with a hash key.
Hash directors typically use the requested URL or the client identity (e.g. session cookie) to compute
the hash key. Since the hash key is always the same for a given input, the output of the hash director
is always the same for a given hash key. Therefore, hash directors select always the same backend
for a given input.
Hash directors are useful to load balance in front of other Varnish caches or other web accelerators.
In this way, cached objects are not duplicated across different cache servers.
Note
In Varnish 3 there is a client director type, which is removed in Varnish 4. This client director
type is a special case of the hash director. Therefore, the semantics of a client director type are
achieved using hash.backend(client.identity).
Page 183
10.2 Health Checks

Poke your web server every N seconds
Affects backend selection
std.healthy(req.backend_hint)
Varnish allows at most threshold amount of failed probes within a set of the last window probes
threshold and window are parameters
Set using .probe
varnishlog: Backend_health
backend server1 {
.host = "server1.example.com";
.probe = {
.url = "/";
.timeout = 1s;
.interval = 4s;
.window = 5;
.threshold = 3;
}
}
You can define a health check for each backend. A health check defines a probe to verify whether a
backend replies on a given URL every given interval.
The above example causes Varnish to send a request to http://server1.example.com/healthtest every
4 seconds. This probe requires that at least 3 requests succeed within a sliding window of 5 request.
Varnish initializes backends marked as sick. The variable .initial defines how many times the
probe must succeed to mark the backend as healthy. .initial defaults to .threshold - 1.
The variable Backend_health of varnishlog shows the result of a backend health probe. Issue
man vsl to see its detailed syntax.
When Varnish has no healthy backend available, it attempts to use a graced copy of the cached
object that a request is looking for. The next section Grace Mode explains this concept in detail.
backend one {
.host = "example.com";
.probe = {
.request =
"GET / HTTP/1.1"
"Host: www.foo.bar"
"Connection: close";
}
}
Page 184
You can also declare standalone probes and reuse them for several backends. It is particularly useful
when you use directors with identical behaviors, or when you use the same health check procedure
across different web applications.
import directors;
probe www_probe {
.url = "/health";
}
backend www1 {
.port = "8081";
.probe = www_probe;
}
backend www2 {
.port = "8082";
.probe = www_probe;
}
sub vcl_init {
new www = directors.round_robin();
www.add_backend(www1);
www.add_backend(www2);
}
Note
Varnish does NOT send a Host header with health checks. If you need that, you can define an
entire request using .request instead of .url.
Note
The healthy function is implemented as VMOD in Varnish 4. req.backend.healthy from
Varnish 3 is replaced by std.healthy(req.backend_hint). Do not forget to include the
import line: import std;
Page 185
10.3 Grace Mode

A graced object is an object that has expired, but is still kept in cache.
Grace mode is when Varnish uses a graced object.
Grace mode is a feature to mitigate thread pile-ups, that allows Varnish to continue serving
requests when the backend cannot do it.
There is more than one way Varnish can use a graced object.
beresp.grace defines the time that Varnish keeps an object after beresp.ttl has elapsed.
When Varnish is in grace mode, Varnish is capable of delivering a stale object and issue an
asynchronous refresh request. When possible, Varnish delivers a fresh object, otherwise Varnish
looks for a stale object. This procedure is also known as stale-while-revalidate.
The most common reason for Varnish to deliver a graced object is when a backend health-probe
indicates a sick backend. Varnish reads the variable obj.grace, which default is 10 seconds, but you
can change it by three means: 1) by parsing the HTTP Cache-Control field
stale-while-revalidate that comes from the backend, 2) by setting the variable beresp.grace
in
VCL,
or
3)
by
changing
the
grace
default
value
with
varnishadm param.set default_grace 20.
In the first case, Varnish parses stale-while-revalidate
automatically, as in:
"Cache-control: max-age=5, stale-while-revalidate=30". In this example, the result of
fetched object's variables are: obj.ttl=5 and obj.grace=30. The second and third case are self
descriptive.
The typical way to use grace is to store an object for several hours after its TTL has elapsed. In this
way, Varnish has always a copy to be delivered immediately, while fetching a new object
asynchronously. If the backend is healthy, a graced object does not get older than a few seconds
(after its TTL has elapsed). If the backend is sick, Varnish may be delivering a graced object up to its
maximum grace time. The following VCL code illustrates a normal usage of grace.
sub vcl_hit {
if (obj.ttl >= 0s) {
# Normal hit
return (deliver);
} elsif (std.healthy(req.backend_hint)) {
# The backend is healthy
# Fetch the object from the backend
return (fetch);
} else {
# No fresh object and the backend is not healthy
if (obj.ttl + obj.grace > 0s) {
# Deliver graced object
# Automatically triggers a background fetch
return (deliver);
} else {
# No valid object to deliver
Page 186
# No healthy backend to handle request

# Return error
return (synth(503, "Backend is down"));
}
}
}
Note
obj.ttl and obj.grace are countdown timers. Objects are valid in cache as long as they
have a positive remaining time equal to obj.ttl + obj.grace.
Page 187
10.3.1 Time-line example

Backend response HTTP Cache-Control header field:
"Cache-control: max-age=60, stale-while-revalidate=30"
or set in VCL:
set req.ttl = 60s;
set beresp.grace = 30s;
50s: Normal delivery
62s: Normal cache miss, but grace mode possible
80s: Normal cache miss, but grace mode possible
92s: Normal cache miss, object is removed from cache
In this time-line example, it is assumed that the object is never refreshed.
If you do not want that objects with a negative TTL are delivered, set beresp.grace = 0. The
downside of this is that all grace functionality is disabled, regardless any reason.
Page 188
10.3.2 When can grace happen

A request is already pending for some specific content
No healthy backend is available
The main goal of grace mode is to avoid requests to pile up whenever a popular object has expired in
cache. As long as a request is waiting for new content, Varnish delivers graced objects instead of
queuing incoming requests. These requests may come from different clients, thus, large number of
clients benefit from grace mode setups.
Page 189
10.3.3 Exercise: Grace

1. Copy the following CGI script in /usr/lib/cgi-bin/test.cgi:
#!/bin/sh
sleep 10
echo "Content-type: text/plain"
echo "Cache-control: max-age=10, stale-while-revalidate=20"
echo
echo "Hello world"
date
2. Make the script executable.
3. Issue varnishlog -i VCL_call,VCL_return in one terminal.
4. Test
that
the
script
works
outside
Varnish
http http://localhost:8080/cgi-bin/test.cgi in another terminal.
by
typing
5. Send a single request, this time via Varnish, to cache the response from the CGI script. This
should take 10 seconds.
6. Send three requests: one before the TTL (10 seconds) elapses, another after 10 seconds and
before 30 seconds, and a last one after 30 seconds.
7. Repeat until you understand the output of varnishlog.
8. Play with the values of max-age and stale-while-revalidate in the CGI script, and the
beresp.grace value in the VCL code.
With this exercise, you should see that as long as the cached object is within its TTL, Varnish delivers
the cached object as normal. Once the TTL expires, Varnish delivers the graced copy, and
asynchronously fetches an object from the backend. Therefore, after 10 seconds of triggering the
asynchronous fetch, an updated object is available in the cache.
Page 190
10.4 retry return action

Available in vcl_backend_response and vcl_backend_error
Re-enters vcl_backend_fetch
Any changes made are kept
Parameter max_retries safe guards against infinite loops
Counter bereq.retries registers how many retries are done
if (beresp.status == 503) {
return (retry);
}
}
The retry return action is available in vcl_backend_response and vcl_backend_error. This
action re-enters the vcl_backend_fetch subroutine. This only influences the backend thread, the
client-side handling is not affected.
You may want to use this action when the backend fails to respond. In this way, Varnish can retry the
request to a different backend. For this, you must define multiple backends.
You can use directors to let Varnish select the next backend to try. Alternatively, you may use
bereq.backend to specifically select another backend.
return (retry) increments the bereq.retries counter. If the number of retries is higher than
max_retries, control is passed to vcl_backend_error.
Note
In Varnish 3.0 it is possible to do return (restart) after the backend response failed. This
is now called return (retry), and jumps back up to vcl_backend_fetch.
Page 191
10.5 Tune Backend Properties

backend default {
.port = "80";
.connect_timeout = 0.5s;
.first_byte_timeout = 20s;
.between_bytes_timeout = 5s;
.max_connections = 50;
}
If a backend has not enough resources, it might be advantageous to set max_connections. So that
a limited number of simultaneous connections are handled by a specific backend. All
backend-specific timers are available as parameters and can be overridden in VCL on a
backend-specific level.
Tip
Varnish only accepts hostnames for backend servers that resolve to a maximum of one IPv4
address and one IPv6 address. The parameter prefer_ipv6 defines which IP address
Varnish prefer.
Page 192
10.6 Access Control Lists (ACLs)

An ACL is a list of IP addresses
VCL programs can use ACLs to define and control the IP addresses that are allowed to purge,
ban, or do any other regulated task.
Compare with client.ip or server.ip
# Who is allowed to purge....
acl local {
"localhost";
/* myself */
"192.168.1.0"/24; /* and everyone on the local network */
!"192.168.1.23"; /* except for the dialin router */
}
sub vcl_recv {
if (client.ip ~ local) {
return (purge);
} else {
}
}
}
An Access Control List (ACL) declaration creates and initializes a named list of IP addresses and
ranges, which can later be used to match client or server IP addresses. ACLs can be used for
anything. They are typically used to control the IP addresses that are allowed to send PURGE or ban
requests, or even to avoid the cache entirely.
You may also setup ACLs to differentiate how your Varnish servers behave. You can, for example,
have a single VCL program for different Varnish servers. In this case, the VCL program evaluates
server.ip and acts accordingly.
ACLs are fairly simple to create. A single IP address or hostname should be in quotation marks, as
"localhost". ACL uses the CIDR notation to specify IP addresses and their associated routing
prefixes. In Varnish's ACLs the slash "/" character is appended outside the quoted IP address, for
example "192.168.1.0"/24.
To exclude an IP address or range from an ACL, and exclamation mark "!" should precede the IP
quoted address. For example !"192.168.1.23". This is useful when, for example, you want to
include all the IP address in a range except the gateway.
Chapter 11Content Composition
Page 193
11 Content Composition
This chapter is for the webdeveloper course only
This chapter teaches you how to glue content from independent sources into one web page.
Cookies and how to work with them
Edge Side Includes (ESI) and how to compose a single client-visible page out of multiple objects
Combining ESI and Cookies
AJAX and masquerading AJAX requests through Varnish
Page 194
11.1 A typical website

Most websites follow a pattern: they have easily distinguishable parts:
A front page
Articles or sub-pages
A login-box or "home bar"
Static elements, like CSS, JavaScript and graphics
To truly utilize Varnish to its full potential, start by analyzing the structure of the website. Ask
yourself this:
What makes web pages in your server different from each other?
Does the differences apply to entire pages, or only parts of them?
How can I let Varnish to know those differences?
Beginning with the static elements should be easy. Previous chapters of this book cover how to
handle static elements. How to proceed with dynamic content?
An easy solution is to only cache content for users that are not logged in. For news-papers, that is
probably enough, but not for web-shops.
Web-shops re-use objects frequently. If you can isolate the user-specific bits, like the shopping cart,
you can cache the rest. You can even cache the shopping cart, if you tell Varnish when to change it.
The most important lessons is to start with what you know.
Page 195
11.2 Cookies
Be careful when caching cookies!
Cookies are frequently used to identify unique users, or user-choices. They can be used for anything
from identifying a user-session in a web-shop to opting for a mobile version of a web page. Varnish
can handle cookies coming from three different sources:
req.http.Cookie header field from clients
beresp.http.Set-Cookie header field from servers
By default Varnish does not cache a page if the Cookie request header or Set-Cookie response
header are present. This is for two main reasons: 1) to avoid littering the cache with large amount of
copies of the same content, and 2) to avoid delivering cookie-based content to a wrong client.
It is far better to either cache multiple copies of the same content for each user or cache nothing at
all, than caching personal, confidential or private content and deliver it to a wrong client. In other
words, the worst is to jeopardize users' privacy for saving backend resources. Therefore, it is strongly
advised to take your time to write a correct VCL program and test it thoroughly before caching
cookies in production deployments.
Despite cookie-based caching being discouraged, Varnish can be forced to cache content based on
cookies. If a client request contains req.http.Cookie, issue return (hash); in vcl_recv. If the
cookie is a Set-Cookie HTTP response header from the server, issue return (deliver); in
vcl_backend_response.
Page 196
11.2.1 Vary and Cookies

Varnish does not cache when cookies are involved by default.
The Vary response header field can be used to cache content that is based on the value of
cookies.
Cookies are widely used, but almost no-one sends Vary: Cookie for content that varies
based on cookies.
Server responses containing Vary: Cookie in their response header are stored as a separate vary
object in the cache. vary objects shared the same hash value.
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11.2.2 Best Practices for Cookies

Remove all cookies that you do not need
Organize the content of your web site in a way that let you easily determine if a page needs a
cookie or not. For example:
/common/ -- no cookies
/user/ -- has user-cookies
/voucher/ -- has only the voucher-cookie
etc.
Add the req.http.Cookie
request header
hash_data(req.http.cookie); in vcl_hash.
to
the
cache
hash
by
issuing
Never cache a Set-Cookie header. Either remove the header before caching or do not cache
the object at all.
Finish vcl_backend_response with something similar to:
if (beresp.ttl > 0s) {
unset beresp.http.Set-cookie;
}
This ensures that all cached pages are stripped of Set-cookie.
Page 198
11.2.3 Exercise: Compare Vary and hash_data

Both a Vary: Cookie response header and hash_data(req.http.Cookie); create separate
objects in the cache. This exercise is all about Vary and hash dynamics.
1. Copy the file material/webdev/cookies.php to /var/www/html/cookies.php.
2. Test cookies.php by issuing:
http -p hH http://localhost/cookies.php "Cookie: user=John"
3. Write a VCL program to force Varnish to cache the response from cookies.php.
4. Change the cookie, and see if you get a new value.
5. Make cookies.php send a Vary: Cookie header, then try changing the cookie again.
6. Try to purge the cookies.php cached object. Check if it affects all, none or just one of the
objects in cache (e.g: change the value of the cookie and see if the PURGE method has purged
all of them).
7. Remove beresp.http.Vary in vcl_backend_fetch and see if Varnish still honors the Vary
header.
8. Add hash_data(req.http.cookie); in vcl_hash. Check how multiple values of cookie give
individual cached pages.
9. Try purging again, and check the result difference after using hash_data() instead of
Vary: Cookie.
After this exercise, you should have a very good idea on how Vary and hash_data(); work. The
exercise only looks for the Cookie header, but the same rules apply to any other header.
Page 199
11.3 Edge Side Includes

What is ESI?
How to use ESI?
Testing ESI without Varnish
Figure 25: Web page assembling using ESI via Varnish

Edge Side Includes or ESI is a small markup language for dynamic web page assembly at the reverse
proxy level. The reverse proxy analyses the HTML code, parses ESI specific markup and assembles
the final result before flushing it to the client. Figure 25 depicts this process.
With ESI, Varnish can be used not only to deliver objects, but to glue them together. The most typical
use case for ESI is a news article with a most recent news box at the side. The article itself is most
likely written once and possibly never changed, and can be cached for a long time. The box at the
side with most recent news, however, changes frequently. With ESI, the article can include a most
recent news box with a different TTL.
When using ESI, Varnish fetches the news article from a web server, then parses the
<esi:include src="/url" /> ESI tag, and fetches the URL via a normal request. Either finding it
already cached or getting it from a web server and inserting it into cache.
The TTL of the ESI element can be 5 minutes while the article is cached for two days. Varnish delivers
the two different objects in one glued page. Thus, Varnish updates parts independently and makes
possible to combine content with different TTL.
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11.3.1 Basic ESI usage

Enabling ESI in Varnish is simple enough:
set beresp.do_esi = true;
}
To include a page in another, the <esi:include> ESI tag is used:
<esi:include src="/url" />
You can also strip off cookies per ESI element. This is done in vcl_recv.
Varnish only supports three ESI tags:
<esi:include>: calls the page defined in the src attribute and replaces the ESI tag with the
content of src.
<esi:remove>: removes any code inside this opening and closing tag.
``: Leaves (content) unparsed. E.g., the following does not
process the <esi:include> tag:

Note
Varnish outputs ESI parsing errors in varnishstat and varnishlog.
Page 201
11.3.2 Example: Using ESI

Copy material/webdev/esi-date.php to /var/www/html/. This file contains an ESI include tag.
<HTML>
<BODY>
<?php
print( "This page is cached for 1 minute.\n" );
echo "Timestamp: \n"
. date("Y-m-d H:i:s");
print( "\n" );
?>
<esi:include src="/cgi-bin/date.cgi"/>
</BODY>
</HTML>
Copy material/webdev/esi-date.cgi to /usr/lib/cgi-bin/. This file is a simple CGI that
outputs the date of the server.
#! /bin/sh
echo
echo
echo
echo
date
"Content-Type: text/plain"
""
"ESI content is cached for 30 seconds."
"Timestamp: "
"+%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S"
For the ESI to work, load the following VCL code.

if (bereq.url == "/esi-date.php") {
set beresp.do_esi = true;
// Do ESI processing
set beresp.ttl = 1m;
// Sets a higher TTL main object
} elsif (bereq.url == "/cgi-bin/esi-date.cgi") {
// Sets a lower TTL on
// the included object
}
}
Then reload Varnish and issue the command http http://localhost/esi-date.php. The
output should show you how Varnish replaces the ESI tag with the response from esi-date.cgi.
This example also tries to show you how the glued objects have different TTLs.
Page 202
11.3.3 Exercise: Enable ESI and Cookies

1. Use material/webdev/esi-top.php and material/webdev/esi-user.php to test ESI.
2. Visit esi-top.php and identify the ESI tag.
3. Enable ESI for esi-top.php in VCL and test.
4. Strip all cookies from esi-top.php and make it cache.
5. Let esi-user.php cache too. It emits Vary: Cookie, but might need some help.
Try to avoid return (hash); in vcl_recv and return (deliver); in vcl_backend_response
as much as you can. This is a general rule to make safer Varnish setups.
During the exercise, make sure you understand all the cache mechanisms at play. You can also try
removing the Vary: Cookie header from esi-user.php.
You may also want to try PURGE. If so, you have to purge each of the objects, because purging just
/esi-top.php does not purge /esi-user.php.
Page 203
11.3.4 Testing ESI without Varnish

Test ESI Using JavaScript to fill in the blanks.
During development of different web pages to be ESI-glued by Varnish, you might not need Varnish
all the time. One important reason for this, is to avoid caching during the development phase. There
is a solution based on JavaScript to interpret ESI syntax without having to use Varnish at all. You can
download the library at the following URL:
http://www.catalystframework.org/calendar/static/2008/esi/ESI_Parser.tar.gz
Once downloaded, extract it in your code base, include esiparser.js and include the following
JavaScript code to trigger the ESI parser:
$(document).ready( function () { do_esi_parsing(document); });
Page 204
11.4 Masquerading AJAX requests
This works
This does not work
With AJAX it is not possible by default to send requests across another domain. This is a security
restriction imposed by browsers. If this represents an issue for your web pages, you can be easily
solve it by using Varnish and VCL.
Page 205
11.4.1 Exercise: write a VCL that masquerades XHR calls

material/webdev/ajax.html
<head>
<script type="text/javascript"
src="http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.4/jquery.min.js">
</script>
<script type="text/javascript">
function getNonMasqueraded()
{
$("#result").load( "http://www.google.com/robots.txt" );
}
function getMasqueraded()
{
$("#result").load( "/masq/robots.txt" );
}
</script>
</head>
<body>
<h1>Cross-domain Ajax</h1>
<ul>
<li><a href="javascript:getNonMasqueraded();">
Test a non masqueraded cross-domain request
</a></li>
<li><a href="javascript:getMasqueraded();">
Test a masqueraded cross-domain request
</a></li>
</ul>
<h1>Result</h1>
<div id="result"></div>
</body>
</html>
Use the provided ajax.html page. Notice that function getNonMasqueraded() fails because the
origin is distinct to the google.com domain. Function getMasqueraded() can do the job if a
proper VCL code handles it. Write the VCL code that masquerades the Ajax request to
http://www.google.com/robots.txt.
Page 206
11.4.2 Solution: write a VCL that masquerades XHR calls

vcl/solution-vcl_fetch-masquerade-ajax-requests.vcl
vcl 4.0;
backend localhost{
.host = "127.0.0.1";
.port = "8080";
}
backend google {
.host = "173.194.112.145";
.port = "80";
}
sub vcl_recv{
if (req.url ~ "^/masq") {
set req.backend_hint = google;
set req.http.host = "www.google.com";
set req.url = regsub(req.url, "^/masq", "");
return (hash);
} else {
set req.backend_hint = localhost;
}
}
Notice that the getMasqueraded() works now after being processed in vcl_recv().
Chapter 12Varnish Plus Software Components
Page 207
12 Varnish Plus Software Components

The Varnish Plus offer of software products includes:
Varnish Massive Storage Engine (MSE), described in the Storage Backends section.
Hashtwo (Varnish Software Implementation of Surrogate Keys)
Varnish Tuner
Varnish Administration Console (VAC),
Varnish Custom Statistics (VCS),
Varnish High Availability (VHA),
SSL/TLS Support,
and more.
For more information about the complete Varnish Plus offer and their documentation, please visit:
https://www.varnish-software.com/what-is-varnish-plus
https://www.varnish-software.com/resources/
Page 208
12.1 Varnish Administration Console (VAC)

Single point of control for simultaneous administration of multiple Varnish Cache servers
VAC provides:
GUI
API
Super Fast Purger
VAC has its own documentation
The Varnish Administration Console (VAC) consists of a GUI and an API. VAC is most commonly used
in production environments where real-time graphs and statistics help identify bottlenecks and
issues within Varnish Cache servers. VAC is a management console for groups of Varnish Cache
servers, also known as cache groups. A cache group is a collection of Varnish Cache servers that have
identical configuration. Attributes on a cache group includes:
One or more Varnish Cache servers
Active Varnish Configuration Language (VCL) file
Homogeneous parameter configuration across all servers in a group
VAC distributes and store VCL files for you. A parameter set is a list of Varnish cache parameters.
These parameters can be applied to one or more cache groups simultaneously, as long as all cache
groups consist of cache servers of the same version.
VAC ships with a JSON-based RESTful API to integrate your own systems with the VAC. All actions
performed via the user interface can be replicated with direct access to the API. This includes
fetching all real-time graph data.
The Super Fast Purger is a high performance cache invalidation delivery mechanism for multiple
installations of Varnish. Super Fast Purger is capable of distributing purge requests to cache groups
across data centers via the Restful interface. Super Fast Purger uses HMAC as security mechanism to
protect your purge requests and thus ensure data integrity.
In order to install VAC on either Debian/Ubuntu or Red Hat Enterprise, one would require access to
the Varnish Plus Software repository. As a Varnish Plus customer, you have access to the installation
guide document. This document has instructions to install, configure, maintain, and troubleshoot
your VAC installation If you have any questions on how to set up your repository or where to obtain
the VAC installation guide, please ask the instructor or send us an email to
support@varnish-software.com.
Figures 26, 27 and 28 show screenshots of the GUI. You may also be interested in trying the VAC
demo at https://vacdemo.varnish-software.com. The instructor of the course provides you the
credentials.
12.1.1 Overview Page of the Varnish Administration Console
Figure 26: Overview page of the Varnish Administration Console
Page 209
Page 210
12.1.2 Configuration Page of the Varnish Administration Console
Figure 27: Configuration page of the Varnish Administration Console
12.1.3 Banning Page of the Varnish Administration Console
Figure 28: Banning page of the Varnish Administration Console
Page 211
Page 212
12.2 Varnish Custom Statistics (VCS)

Data stream management system (DSMS) for your Varnish servers
Real-time statistics engine to aggregate, display and analyze user web traffic
Provides an API to retrieve statistics
Provides a GUI that presents lists and charts to get a quick overview of the key metrics that
matters you
Figure 29: VCS Data Flow

Varnish Custom Statistics (VCS) is our data stream management system (DSMS) implementation for
Varnish. VCS allows you to analyze the traffic from multiple Varnish servers in near real-time to
compute traffic statistics and detect critical conditions. This is possible by continuously extracting
transactions with the vcs-key tags in your VSL. Thus, VCS does not slow down your Varnish servers.
You can add as many custom vcs-key tags as you need in your VCL code. This allows you to define
your own metrics.
VCS can be used to produce statistical data or even apply complex event processing techniques.
Thus, VCS offers endless opportunities for tracking all aspects of websites' behavior. Typical cases
include:
A/B testing
Measuring click-through rate
Track slow pages and cache misses
Analyze what is "hot" right now in a news website
Track changes in currency conversions in e-commerce
Track changes in Stock Keeping Units (SKUs) <behavior in e-commerce
Track number of unique consumers of HLS/HDS/DASH video streams
Page 213
Figure 30 and 31 are screenshots of the VCS GUI. These screenshots are from the demo on
http://vcsdemo.varnish-software.com. Your instructor can provide you credential for you to try the
demo online.
Note
For further details on VCS, please look
https://www.varnish-software.com/resources/.
at
its
own
documentation
at
Page 214
12.2.1 VCS Data Model

Represents a finite relation from an infinite stream.
Uses time-based tumbling windows
API to query data model
API outputs in JSON and JSONP format
Table 20: Data model in VCS
vcs-key
example.com
example.com
timestamp
2013-09-18T09:58:00
2013-09-18T09:58:30
n_req
84
76
n_req_uniq
NaN
NaN
n_miss
avg_restart
0.000000
0.000000
n_bodybytes
12264
10950
ttfb_miss
NaN
0.000440
ttb_hit
0.000048
0.000054
resp_1xx
resp_2xx
84
76
resp_3xx
resp_4xx
resp_5xx
reqbytes
respbytes
32
29
berespbytes
30
27
bereqbytes
VCS uses the time-based tumbling windows technique to segment the data stream into finite parts.
These windows are created based on the vcs-key tag that you specify in your VCL code. Each
window aggregates the data within a configurable period of time.
Table 20 shows the data model in VCS. This table is basically a representation of two windows seen
as two records in a conventional database. In this example, data shows two windows of 30 second
based on the example.com vcs-key. For presentation purposes in this page, the distribution of
this table is of a database that grows from left to right.
The VCS data model has the following fields:
Page 215
vcs-key
common key name for transactions making this record
timestamp
Timestamp at the start of the window
n_req
Number of requests
n_req_uniq
Number of unique requests, if configured
n_miss
Number of backend requests (i.e. cache misses) Number of hits can be calculated as
n_hit = n_req - n_miss
avg_restart
Average number of VCL restarts triggered per request
n_bodybytes
Total number of bytes transferred for the response bodies
ttfb_miss
Average time to first byte for requests that ended up with a backend request
ttb_hit
Average time to first byte for requests that were served directly from varnish cache
resp_1xx -- resp_5xx
Counters for response status codes.
reqbytes
Number of bytes received from clients.
respbytes
Number of bytes transmitted to clients.
berespbytes
Number of bytes received from backends.
bereqbytes
Number of bytes transmitted to backends.
You can think of each window as a record of a traditional database that resides in memory. This
database is dynamic, since the engine of VCS updates it every time a new window (record) is
available. VCS provides an API to retrieve this data from the table above in JSON format:
{
"example.com": [
{
"timestamp": "2013-09-18T09:58:30",
"n_req": 76,
"n_req_uniq": "NaN",
"n_miss": 1,
Page 216
"avg_restarts": 0.000000,
"n_bodybytes": 10950,
"ttfb_miss": 0.000440,
"ttfb_hit": 0.000054,
"resp_1xx": 0,
"resp_2xx": 76,
"resp_3xx": 0,
"resp_4xx": 0,
"resp_5xx": 0,
...
},
{
"timestamp": "2013-09-18T09:58:00",
"n_req": 84,
"n_req_uniq": "NaN",
"n_miss": 0,
"avg_restarts": 0.000000,
"n_bodybytes": 12264,
"ttfb_miss": "NaN",
"ttfb_hit": 0.000048,
"resp_1xx": 0,
"resp_2xx": 84,
"resp_3xx": 0,
"resp_4xx": 0,
"resp_5xx": 0,
...
},
...
]
}
Page 217
12.2.2 VCS API

API provides ready-to-use queries
Queries over HTTP
Top most sorting
Results in JSON and JSONP format
Examples:
For vcs-key with names ending with .gif, retrieve a list of the top 10:
/match/(.*)%5C.gif$/top
Find a list of the top 50 slowest backend requests:
/all/top_ttfb/50
The VCS API queries the VCS data model and the output is in JSON format. The API responds to
requests for the following URLs:
/key/<vcs-key>
Retrieves stats for a single vcs-key. <vcs-key> name must be URL encoded.
/match/<regex>
Retrieves a list of vcs-key matching the URL encoded regular-expression. Accepts the query
parameter verbose=1, which displays all stats collected for the <vcs-keys> matched.
/all
Retrieves a list of all the <vcs-keys> currently in the data model.
For /match/<regex> and /all, VCS can produce sorted lists. For that, you can append one of the
following sorting commands.
/top
Sort based on number of requests.
/top_ttfb
Sort based on the ttfb_miss field.
/top_size
Sort based on the n_bodybytes field.
/top_miss
Sort based on the n_miss field.
/top_respbytes
Sort based on number of bytes transmitted to clients.
/top_reqbytes
Sort based on number of bytes received from clients.
Page 218
/top_berespbytes
Sort based on number of bytes fetched from backends.
/top_bereqbytes
Sort based on number of bytes transmitted to backends.
/top_restarts
Sort based on the avg_restarts field.
/top_5xx, /top_4xx, ..., /top_1xx
Sort based on number of HTTP response codes returned to clients for 5xx, 4xx, 3xx, etc.
/top_uniq
Sort based on the n_req_uniq field.
Further, a /k parameter can be appended, which specifies the number of keys to include in the top
list. If no k value is provided, the top 10 is displayed.
Note
For more details on the API, please read the documentation of vstatd.
12.2.3 Screenshots of GUI

VCS provides its own GUI
You can interact with the API via this GUI
Screenshots from http://vcsdemo.varnish-software.com/
Figure 30: Header of Varnish Custom Statistics
Figure 31: Summary of metrics along with time based graphs
Page 219
Page 220
12.3 Varnish High Availability (VHA)

Content replicator
Increases resiliency and performance
Two-server, circular, multi-master replication
Requests to replicate content against Varnish servers, not the backend
Figure 32: VHA Sequence Diagram

The Varnish High Availability agent (vha-agent) is a content replicator with the aim of copying the
cached objects from an origin Varnish server to a neighboring Varnish server. This increases
resiliency and performance, specially when backend traffic surges.
vha-agent reads the log of Varnish, and for each object insertion detected it fires a request to the
neighboring Varnish server. This server fetches the object from the origin Varnish server. As a result,
the same object is cached in both servers with only one single backend fetch.
This solution requires vha-agent to be installed on the origin Varnish server, and some simple VCL
configuration on the replicated Varnish server. Ideally, vha-agent is installed on both servers so they
can both replicate object insertions from each other in an active/active configuration.
Typical uses of VHA include:
Business critical Varnish Plus installations
Any multi-cache Varnish setup
Multi node CDN POP installations
The replication of cached objects may bring the need for multiple cache invalidation. For that
purpose, you can use the Varnish Administration Console (VAC). Remember: you should define the
rules on how to invalidate cached objects before caching them in production environments.
Page 221
12.4 SSL/TLS Support

SSL/TLS support on both the HTTP backend and client side.
Easy configuration:
backend default {
.host = "host.name";
.port = "https";
.ssl = 1;
.ssl_nosni = 1;
.ssl_noverify = 1;
}
#
#
#
#
This defaults to https when SSL

Turns on SSL support
Disable SNI extension
Don't verify peer
Varnish Plus allows you to improve your website security without having to rely on third-party
solutions. SSL/TLS support allows you to encrypt and secure communication on both the front and
backend as Varnish acts as both HTTP server and client. On the client side, the HTTP server
intercepts web requests before they reach a web server. The SSL/TLS support on this side enables
traffic encryption between the client and Varnish.
On the backend, the HTTP client fetches content missing in the cache from the web server. This
enables content to be fetched over the encrypted SSL/TLS, which particularly benefits customers
who run a fully encrypted data center or have web servers that reside in a different location to their
Varnish Plus servers.
Page 222
Chapter 13Appendix A: Resources
13 Appendix A: Resources
Community driven:
https://www.varnish-cache.org
https://www.varnish-cache.org/docs/
http://repo.varnish-cache.org/
https://www.varnish-cache.org/trac/wiki/VCLExamples
Public mailing lists: https://www.varnish-cache.org/trac/wiki/MailingLists
Public IRC channel: #varnish at irc.linpro.no
Commercial:
https://www.varnish-software.com/resources/
http://planet.varnish-cache.org/
https://www.varnish-software.com
http://repo.varnish-software.com (for service agreement customers)
support@varnish-software.com (for existing customers, with SLA)
sales@varnish-software.com
Chapter 14Appendix B: Varnish Programs
Page 223
14 Appendix B: Varnish Programs

SHared Memory LOG (SHMLOG) tools:
varnishlog
varnishncsa
varnishhist
varnishtop
Administration:
varnishadm
Global counters:
varnishstat
Misc:
varnishtest
varnishlog, varnishadm and varnishstat are explained in the Examining Varnish Server's
Output chapter. varnishtest is used for regression tests, mainly during development, but it also
useful to learn more about Varnish's behavior. For more information about varnishtest, see its
man page.
Next sections explain varnishtop, varnishncsa, and varnishhist.
Page 224
14.1 varnishtop
$varnishtop -i BereqURL,RespStatus
list length 5
7.20
5.26
0.86
0.68
0.39
RespStatus
RespStatus
BereqURL
BereqURL
BereqURL
trusty-amd64
200
404
/test.html
/
/index.html
Group tags and tag-content by frequency

varnishtop groups tags and their content together to generate a sorted list of the most frequently
appearing tag/tag-content pair. This tool is sometimes overlooked, because its usefulness is visible
after you start filtering. The above example lists status codes that Varnish returns.
Two of the perhaps most useful variants of varnishtop are:
varnishtop -i BereqURL: creates a list of URLs requested at the backend. Use this to find
out which URL is the most requested.
varnishtop -i RespStatus: lists what status codes Varnish returns to clients.
You may also combine taglist as in the above example. Even more, you may apply Query Language
-q options. For example, varnishtop -q 'respstatus > 400' shows you counters for
responses where client seem to have erred.
Some other possibly useful examples are:
varnishtop -i ReqUrl: displays what URLs are most frequently requested from clients.
varnishtop -i ReqHeader -I 'User-Agent:.*Linux.*': lists User-Agent headers with
"Linux" in it. This example is useful for Linux users, since most web browsers in Linux report
themselves as Linux.
varnishtop -i RespStatus: lists status codes received in clients from backends.
varnishtop -i VCL_call: shows what VCL functions are used.
varnishtop -i ReqHeader -I Referrer shows the most common referrer addresses.
Page 225
14.2 varnishncsa
10.10.0.1 - - [24/Aug/2008:03:46:48 +0100] "GET \
http://www.example.com/images/foo.png HTTP/1.1" 200 5330 \
"http://www.example.com/" "Mozilla/5.0"
If you already have tools in place to analyze NCSA Common log format, varnishncsa can be used
to print the SHMLOG in this format. varnishncsa dumps everything pointing to a certain domain
and subdomains.
Filtering works similar to varnishlog.
Page 226
14.3 varnishhist
1:1, n = 71
localhost
#
#
#
#
##
###
###
###
###
###
| ###
| ###
| | ###
|||| ###
#
|||| ####
#
|##|#####
#
#
# # #
+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+-------+------|1e-6
|1e-5
|1e-4
|1e-3
|1e-2
|1e-1
|1e0
|1e1
|1e2
The varnishhist utility reads the SHMLOG and presents a continuously updated histogram
showing the distribution of the last n requests. varnishhist is particularly useful to get an idea
about the performance of your Varnish Cache server and your backend.
The horizontal axis shows a time range from 1e-6 (1 microsecond) to 1e2 (100 seconds). This time
range shows the internal processing time of your Varnish Cache server and the time it takes to
receive a response from the backend. Thus, this axis does not show the time perceived at the client
side, because other factors such as network delay may affect the overall response time.
Hits are marked with a pipe character ("|"), and misses are marked with a hash character ("#"). These
markers are distributed according to the time taken to process the request. Therefore, distributions
with more markers on the left side represent a faster performance.
When the histogram grows in vertical direction more than what the terminal can display, the 1:m
rate changes on the left top corner. Where m represent the number of times that each marker is
found. On the right top corner, you can see the name of the host.
Page 227
14.4 Exercise: Try the tools

Send a few requests to Varnish using http -p hH http://localhost/
verify you have some cached objects using varnishstat
look at the communication with the clients, using varnishlog. Try sending various headers
and see them appear in varnishlog.
Install siege
Run siege against localhost while looking at varnishhist
Page 228
Chapter 15Appendix C: Extra Material
15 Appendix C: Extra Material

The following is content needed for some of the exercises.
Page 229
15.1 ajax.html
<head>
<script type="text/javascript"
src="http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.4/jquery.min.js">
</script>
<script type="text/javascript">
function getNonMasqueraded()
{
$("#result").load( "http://www.google.com/robots.txt" );
}
function getMasqueraded()
{
$("#result").load( "/masq/robots.txt" );
}
</script>
</head>
<body>
<h1>Cross-domain Ajax</h1>
<ul>
<li><a href="javascript:getNonMasqueraded();">
Test a non masqueraded cross-domain request
</a></li>
<li><a href="javascript:getMasqueraded();">
Test a masqueraded cross-domain request
</a></li>
</ul>
<h1>Result</h1>
<div id="result"></div>
</body>
</html>
Page 230
15.2 article.php
<?php
header("Cache-Control: public, must-revalidate, max-age=3600, s-maxage=3600");
?>
<head></head>
<body>
<h1>This is an article, cached for 1 hour</h1>
<h2>Now is <?php echo $now; ?></h2>
<a href="<?=$_SERVER['PHP_SELF']?>">Refresh this page</a>
</body>
</html>
15.3 cookies.php
<?php
print( "The following cookies have been received from the server\n" );
foreach( $_COOKIE as $name => $value )
print( "- ${name} : ${value}\n" );
?>
Page 231
Page 232
15.4 esi-top.php
<?php
header('Content-Type: text/html');
header('Cache-Control: max-age=30, s-maxage=3600');
$setc = "";
if( isset($_POST['k']) and $_POST['k'] !== '' and
isset($_POST['v']) and $_POST['v'] !== '') {
$k=$_POST['k'];
$v=$_POST['v'];
$setc = "Set-Cookie: $k=$v";
header("$setc");
?><meta http-equiv="refresh" content="1" />
<h1>Refreshing to set cookie <?php print $setc; ?></h1><?php
}
?>
<html><head><title>ESI top page</title></head><body><h1>ESI Test page</h1>
<p>This is content on the top-page of the ESI page.
The top page is cached for 1 hour in Varnish,
but only 30 seconds on the client.</p>
<p>The time when the top-element was created:</p><h3>
<?php echo "$now"; ?>
<h1>Set a cookie:</h1><form action="/esi-top.php" method="POST">
Key: <input type="text" name="k">
Value: <input type="text" name="v">
<input type="submit"> </form>
</h3><p>The top page received the following Cookies:</p><ul>
<?php
print( "<li>${name} : ${value}</li>\n" );
?>
<table border="1"><tr><td><esi:include src="/esi-user.php" /></td></tr>
</table></body></html>
15.5 esi-user.php
<?php
header('Content-Type: text/html');
header('Cache-Control: max-age=30, s-maxage=20');
header('Vary: Cookie');
?>
<p>This is content on the user-specific ESI-include. This part of
the page is can be cached in Varnish separately since it emits
a "Vary: Cookie"-header. We can not affect the client-cache of
this sub-page, since that is determined by the cache-control
headers on the top-element.</p>
<p>The time when the user-specific-element was created:</p><h3>
<?php echo "$now"; ?>
</h3><p>The user-specific page received the following Cookies:

</p><ul>
<?php
print( "<li>${name} : ${value}</li>\n" );
?>
</ul>
Page 233
Page 234
15.6 httpheadersexample.php
<?php
define( 'LAST_MODIFIED_STRING', 'Sat, 09 Sep 2000 22:00:00 GMT' );
// expires_date : 10s after page generation
$expires_date = new DateTime();
$expires_date->add(new DateInterval('PT10S'));
$headers = array(
'Date' => date( 'D, d M Y H:i:s', time() ),
);
if( isset( $_GET['h'] ) and $_GET['h'] !== '' )
{
switch( $_GET['h'] )
{
case "expires" :
$headers['Expires'] = toUTCDate($expires_date);
break;
case "cache-control":
$headers['Cache-Control'] = "public, must-revalidate,
max-age=3600, s-maxage=3600";
break;
case "cache-control-override":
$headers['Cache-Control'] = "public, must-revalidate,
max-age=2, s-maxage=2";
break;
case "last-modified":
$headers['Last-Modified'] = LAST_MODIFIED_STRING;
$headers['Etag'] = md5( 12345 );
if( isset( $_SERVER['HTTP_IF_MODIFIED_SINCE'] ) and
$_SERVER['HTTP_IF_MODIFIED_SINCE'] ==
LAST_MODIFIED_STRING ) {
header( "HTTP/1.1 304 Not Modified" );
exit( );
}
break;
case "vary":
$headers['Vary'] = 'User-Agent';
Page 235
Page 236
break;
}
sendHeaders( $headers );
}
function sendHeaders( array $headerList )
{
foreach( $headerList as $name => $value )
{
header( "${name}: ${value}" );
}
}
function toUTCDate( DateTime $date )
{
$date->setTimezone( new DateTimeZone( 'UTC' ) );
return $date->format( 'D, d M Y H:i:s \G\M\T' );
}
?>
<head></head>
<body>
<h1>Headers sent</h1>
<?php
foreach( $headers as $name => $value ) {
print "<strong>${name}</strong>: ${value}<br/>";
}
if( isset( $_SERVER['HTTP_IF_MODIFIED_SINCE'] ) ) {
print "<strong>If-Modified-Since</strong> has been
sent in the";
print "request, value : " .
$_SERVER['HTTP_IF_MODIFIED_SINCE'];
}
?>
<hr/>
<h1>Links for testing</h1>
<ul>
<li><a href="<?=$_SERVER['PHP_SELF']?>?h=expires">
Test Expires response header</a></li>
<li><a href="<?=$_SERVER['PHP_SELF']?>?h=cache-control">
Test Cache-Control response header</a></li>
<li><a href="<?=$_SERVER['PHP_SELF']?>?
h=cache-control-override">
Test Cache-Control response header overrides Expires</a></li>
Page 237
<li><a href="<?=$_SERVER['PHP_SELF']?>?h=last-modified">
Test Last-Modified/If-modified-since response header</a></li>
<li><a href="<?=$_SERVER['PHP_SELF']?>?h=vary">
Test Vary response header</a></li>
<ul>
</body>
</html>
Page 238
15.7 purgearticle.php
<?php
header( 'Cache-Control: max-age=0' );
$hostname = 'localhost';
$port
= 80;
$URL
= '/article.php';
$debug
= true;
print "Updating the article in the database ...\n";
purgeURL( $hostname, $port, $URL, $debug );
function purgeURL( $hostname, $port, $purgeURL, $debug )
{
$finalURL = sprintf(
"http://%s:%d%s", $hostname, $port, $purgeURL
);
print( "Purging ${finalURL}\n" );
$curlOptionList = array(
CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER
CURLOPT_CUSTOMREQUEST
CURLOPT_HEADER
CURLOPT_NOBODY
CURLOPT_URL
CURLOPT_CONNECTTIMEOUT_MS
);
=>
=>
=>
=>
=>
=>
true,
'PURGE',
true ,
true,
$finalURL,
2000
$fd = false;
if( $debug == true ) {
print "\n---- Curl debug -----\n";
$fd = fopen("php://output", 'w+');
$curlOptionList[CURLOPT_VERBOSE] = true;
$curlOptionList[CURLOPT_STDERR] = $fd;
}
$curlHandler = curl_init();
curl_setopt_array( $curlHandler, $curlOptionList );
curl_exec( $curlHandler );
curl_close( $curlHandler );
if( $fd !== false ) {
fclose( $fd );
}
}
?>
15.8 test.php
<?php
$cc = "";
if( isset($_GET['k']) and $_GET['k'] !== '' and
isset($_GET['v']) and $_GET['v'] !== '') {
$k=$_GET['k'];
$v=$_GET['v'];
$cc = "Cache-Control: $k=$v";
header("$cc");
}
?>
<head></head>
<body>
<h1>Cache-Control Header:</h1>
<?php
print "<pre>$cc</pre>\n";
?>
<hr/>
<form action="/test.php" method="GET">
<input type="submit">
</form>
</body>
</html>
Page 239
Page 240
15.9 set-cookie.php
<?php
header("Cache-Control: max-age=0");
$cc = "";
if( isset($_POST['k']) and $_POST['k'] !== '' and
isset($_POST['v']) and $_POST['v'] !== '') {
$k=$_POST['k'];
$v=$_POST['v'];
$setc = "Set-Cookie: $k=$v";
header("$setc");
}
?>
<head></head>
<body>
<h1>Set-Cookie Header:</h1>
<?php
print "<pre>$setc</pre>\n";
?>
<hr/>
<form action="/set-cookie.php" method="POST">
<input type="submit">
</form>
</body>
</html>
Page 241
15.10 VCL Migrator from Varnish 3 to Varnish 4

varnish3to4 is a script to assist you migrating a VCL file from Varnish 3 to 4. The script aims to replace
most of the syntactical changes in VCL code from Varnish 3 to Varnish 4, but it is not exhaustive. That
said, you should use it under your own responsibility.
You can download the script from https://github.com/fgsch/varnish3to4. Usage and up-to-date
details about the script is at the same web address.
Page 242
Chapter 16Appendix D: Varnish Three Letter Acronyms
16 Appendix D: Varnish Three Letter Acronyms

VAV
Varnish Arg Vector -- Argv parsing.
VBE
Varnish Back End -- Code for contacting backends (bin/varnishd/cache_backend.c)
VBP
Varnish Backend Polling -- Health checks of backends (bin/varnishd/cache_backend_poll.c)
VCA
Varnish Connection Acceptor -- The code that receives/accepts the TCP connections
(bin/varnishd/cache_acceptor.c)
VCC
VCL to C Compiler -- The code that compiles VCL to C code. (lib/libvcl)
VCL
Varnish Configuration Language -- The domain-specific programming language used for
configuring a varnishd.
VCT
Varnish CType(3) -- Character classification for RFC2616 and XML parsing.
VDD
Varnish (Core) Developer Day -- Quarterly invite-only meeting strictly for Varnish core (C)
developers, packagers and VMOD hackers.
VEV
Varnish EVent -- library functions to implement a simple event-dispatcher.
VGB
Varnish Governing Board -- May or may not exist. If you need to ask, you are not on it.
VGC
Varnish Generated Code -- Code generated by VCC from VCL.
VIN
Varnish Instance Naming -- Resolution of -n arguments.
VLU
Varnish Line Up -- library functions to collect stream of bytes into lines for processing.
(lib/libvarnish/vlu.c)
VRE
Varnish Regular-Expression -- library functions for regular-expression based matching and
substring replacement. (lib/libvarnish/vre.c)
VRT
Varnish Run Time -- functions called from compiled code. (bin/varnishd/cache_vrt.c)
VRY
VaRY -- Related to processing of Vary: HTTP headers. (bin/varnishd/cache_vary.c)
Chapter 16Appendix D: Varnish Three Letter Acronyms
Page 243
VSL
Varnish Shared memory Log -- The log written into the shared memory segment for
varnish{log,ncsa,top,hist} to see.
VSB
Varnish string Buffer -- a copy of the FreeBSD "sbuf" library, for safe string handling.
VSC
Varnish Statistics Counter -- counters for various stats, exposed via varnishapi.
VSS
Varnish Session Stuff -- library functions to wrap DNS/TCP. (lib/libvarnish/vss.c)
VTC
Varnish Test Code -- a test-specification for the varnishtest program.
VTLA
Varnish Three Letter Acronym -- No rule without an exception.
VUG
Varnish User Group meeting -- Half-yearly event where the users and developers of Varnish
Cache gather to share experiences and plan future development.
VWx
Varnish Waiter 'x' -- A code module to monitor idle sessions.
VWE
Varnish Waiter Epoll -- epoll(2) (linux) based waiter module.
VWK
Varnish Waiter Kqueue -- kqueue(2) (freebsd) based waiter module.
VWP
Varnish Waiter Poll -- poll(2) based waiter module.
VWS
Varnish Waiter Solaris -- Solaris ports(2) based waiter module.

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The Varnish Book

Frontend (From Client) Workthread

Backend (To Server) Workthread

see backend graph

copy obj attr

Francisco Velzquez (Varnish Software), Kristian Lyngstl, Tollef Fog Heen,

1.1 What is Varnish?

1.2 Varnish Cache and Varnish Plus

1.3 Varnish Software

1.4 What Is New in Varnish 4

2.1 How objects are stored

2.2 Object Lifetime

3.1 Varnish Distribution

3.2 Install Varnish and Apache as Backend

3.2.1 Install Apache

3.2.2 Install Varnish

3.2.3 Configure Varnish

3.2.4 Installation Test

3.3 The Management Interface varnishadm

3.4 More About Varnish Configuration

3.5 Command Line Configuration

3.6 Defining a Backend in VCL

3.8 Exercise: Fetch data through Varnish

4 Examining Varnish Server's Output

4.1 Log Data Tools

4.2 Log Layout

4.3.1 Transaction Groups

4.3.2 Example of Transaction Grouping with varnishlog

4.4 Query Language

4.6.1 Notable Counters

5.1.1 The Parent Process: The Manager

5.1.2 The Child Process: The Cacher

5.1.3 VCL Compilation

5.2 Storage Backends

5.3 The SHared Memory Log (SHMLOG)

5.4 Tunable Parameters

5.5 Varnish Tuner

5.5.1 Varnish Tuner Persistence

5.5.2 Install Varnish Tuner

5.6 Threading Model

5.7 Threading parameters

5.7.1 Details of Threading Parameters

5.7.2 Number of Threads

5.7.3 Timing Thread Growth

5.8 System Parameters

5.10 Exercise: Tune first_byte_timeout

5.11 Exercise: Configure threading

6.1 Protocol basics

6.3 Request example

6.5 Response example

6.6 HTTP request/response control flow

6.7 Statelessness and idempotence

6.8 Cache related headers

6.9 Exercise: Test various Cache headers

6.19 Header availability summary

6.20 Cache-hit and misses

6.21 Exercise: Use article.php to test Age

7.3 The VCL Finite State Machine

7.4 VCL Syntax

7.5 VCL built-in functions