If you are looking to increase the page load speed of your Apache web server on AlmaLinux, the Varnish caching server might be just what you need. Jack Wallen walks you through installation and configuration.
The Varnish cache tool is capable of dramatically speeding up your web page loading by a factor of 10x to 300x. If your sites are in high demand, you’ll want them to load as quickly as possible. For that purpose, you should definitely consider this open source caching HTTP reverse proxy.
TO SEE: 5 Programming Languages Network Architects Should Learn (Free PDF) (TechRepublic)
Cache Varnish works by caching content in memory, so page load time is not only reduced, but it also helps with your search engine results page (SERP). Ultimately, this will improve the user experience on your site. It’s a win-win.
I want to walk you through the process of installing Varnish to serve Apache web pages on AlmaLinux.
What you will need
To successfully install Varnish, you will need a running instance of AlmaLinux and a user with sudo privileges. That’s it. Let’s do cache magic.
How to install varnish
The first thing we need to do is disable the installation of the version of Varnish found in the default AlmaLinux repository. To do this, connect to your server and run the command:
sudo dnf module disable varnish -y
Next, we need to install the EPEL repository with:
sudo dnf install epel-release -y
Add the Varnish cache by downloading and running a simple script with the following commands:
wget https://packagecloud.io/install/repositories/varnishcache/varnish70/script.rpm.sh
sudo bash script.rpm.sh
Finally, install Varnish with:
sudo dnf install varnish -y
Start and enable the Varnish service with:
sudo systemctl enable --now varnish
How to set up varnish
We can now configure Varnish. Open the configuration file with:
sudo nano /usr/lib/systemd/system/varnish.service
The default port for Varnish is 6081. We want to change it to port 80. Find the block:
ExecStart=/usr/sbin/varnishd
-a :6081
-a localhost:8443,PROXY
-p feature=+http2
-f /etc/varnish/default.vcl
-s malloc,256m
ExecReload=/usr/sbin/varnishreload
Change 6081 to 80 in that section.
Save and close the file. Reload the systemctl daemon with:
sudo systemctl daemon-reload
Restart Varnish with:
sudo systemctl restart varnish
How to Configure Varnish for Apache
If Apache is not already installed, do it with:
sudo dnf install httpd -y
Start and activate the service with:
sudo systemctl enable --now httpd
Enable http traffic through the firewall with:
sudo firewall-cmd --zone=public --permanent --add-service=http
sudo firewall-cmd --reload
Open the Apache configuration file with:
sudo nano /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf
Look for the line:
Listen 80
Replace this line with:
Listen 8080
You will also need to modify all listening ports in all virtual host configuration files for each site or application that needs to be cached through Varnish.
Save and close the file.
Restart Apache with:
sudo systemctl restart httpd
How to check that the varnish is working
To verify that Varnish is working, run the command:
curl -I http://SERVER
Where SERVER is the IP address or domain of the hosting server. You should see output that includes:
X-Varnish: 2
Age: 0
Via: 1.1 varnish (Varnish/7.0)
Accept-Ranges: bytes
Connection: keep-alive
If you see Varnish listed (as you do above), everything is working and Varnish is cached for your Apache server. You can also run the varnishstat command to view your Varnish caching server statistics.
And that’s all there is to installing Varnish Caching Server for Apache on AlmaLinux. Take advantage of this faster page loading.
Subscribe to TechRepublic How to make technology work on YouTube for all the latest tech tips for professionals from Jack Wallen.
Comments are closed.