Install & Configure Varnish to Use with Magento 2

Rohan Sharma – 5 years ago – no comments – Developments

Varnish is an HTTP reverse proxy that caches content in memory in front of a Web Server. It basically reduces the load on Apache and PHP as all the cacheable pages are managed by Varnish.

Magento 2 comes with built-in support for Varnish caching, though we can continue using Full-Page cache by Magento, but it is recommended to use Varnish because of its performance.

Below is an image of the setup we will be using in this step

Let us now proceed with the Varnish installation and then configuring it with Magento.

Please note that the following guide is for Ubuntu systems.

Install Varnish

sudo apt install varnish

Make sure the Varnish version is 4.x or 5.x, You can check it by using the following command

varnishd -V

Switch Apache’s Default port to 8080

sudo nano /etc/apache2/ports.conf

then make the following changes

Listen 8080

Now open /etc/apache2/sites-available/000-default.conf

sudo nano /etc/apache2/sites-available/000-default.conf

make the following changes

Restart Apache

sudo service apache2 restart

Configure Varnish to use Port 80

Since we are putting Varnish in front of our Web Server which is Apache so we have to configure Varnish to use port 80.

sudo mkdir -p /etc/systemd/system/varnish.service.d/
sudo nano /etc/systemd/system/varnish.service.d/override.conf

and add the following

[Service]
ExecStart=
ExecStart=/usr/sbin/varnishd -j unix,user=vcache -F -a :80 -T localhost:6082 -f /etc/varnish/default.vcl -S /etc/varnish/secret -s malloc,512M

Save and Close the file

Run the following command to regenerate dependency tree

sudo systemctl daemon-reload

Restart Varnish

sudo service varnish restart

Let’s confirm by checking the ports

sudo netstat -tulpn

As you can see in the above image that Varnish is listening on port 80 and Apache on 8080.

Now we will confirm it with our Magento installation. Run the following CURL command to see the headers

curl -I -v –location-trusted ‘<your Magento base URL>’

Look for headers like the following:

Configure Magento to use Varnish

In your Magento Admin go to STORES > Settings > Configuration > ADVANCED > System > Full Page Cache.

From the Caching Application list, click Varnish Caching & Save Config

Now our Magento is using Varnish cache instead of default Full-Page Cache. But we need to follow few more steps in order to configure Varnish with Magento completely.

Under Varnish Configuration within Magento change Access list & Backend Host to your Magento server IP and hit Save Config

Make sure you open 8080 port for your server instance on AWS since our Apache is listening on 8080

Click on Export VCL for Varnish depending upon the Varnish version we have installed.

You can confirm the Varnish version by running the following command

sudo varnishd -V

In our case it is Varnish 5 so we will click the Export VCL for Varnish 5 button

Backup your existing default.vcl

sudo cp /etc/varnish/default.vcl /etc/varnish/default.vcl.bak2

Rename exported varnish.vcl to default.vcl and copy to /etc/varnish/ directory

mv <download_directory>/varnish.vcl default.vcl
cp <download_directory>/default.vcl /etc/varnish/default.vcl

Now when you run your Magento Store in Browser most likely you will see the following error

Error 503 Backend fetch failed

Let’s make some changes to the default.vcl.

Remove Health Check

.probe = {
    .url = "/pub/health_check.php";
    .timeout = 2s;
    .interval = 5s;
    .window = 10;
    .threshold = 5;
   }

Remove Grace Period

sub vcl_hit {
    if (obj.ttl >= 0s) {
        # Hit within TTL period
        return (deliver);
    }
    if (std.healthy(req.backend_hint)) {
        if (obj.ttl + 300s > 0s) {
            # Hit after TTL expiration, but within grace period
            set req.http.grace = "normal (healthy server)";
            return (deliver);
        } else {
            # Hit after TTL and grace expiration
            return (miss);
        }
    } else {
        # server is not healthy, retrieve from cache
        set req.http.grace = "unlimited (unhealthy server)";
        return (deliver);
    }
}

Remove Collect All Cookies

std.collect(req.http.Cookie);

Remove the Following from sub vcl_deliver

# Not letting browser to cache non-static files
    if (resp.http.Cache-Control !~ "private" && req.url !~ "^/(pub/)?(media|static)/") {
        set resp.http.Pragma = "no-cache";
        set resp.http.Expires = "-1";
        set resp.http.Cache-Control = "no-store, no-cache, must-revalidate, max-age=0";
    }

    unset resp.http.X-Magento-Debug;
    unset resp.http.X-Magento-Tags;
    unset resp.http.X-Powered-By;
    unset resp.http.Server;
    unset resp.http.X-Varnish;
    unset resp.http.Via;
    unset resp.http.Link;

Setup Magento Admin to Purge Varnish Cache

Now we need to configure Magento to purge Varnish cache from the available cache management tool within Admin. We need to use the following command

php bin/magento setup:config:set –http-cache-hosts=your-magento-server-ip:varnish-port

eg.

php bin/magento setup:config:set --http-cache-hosts=192.0.2.100:80

We should be good now. Let’s Confirm if Magento is properly configured with Varnish

Check page Load time

All the cacheable pages like storefront, category, product pages should load less then 150ms. Most likely once they are cached they will load in less than 10ms

To Confirm use the following steps

Access any cacheable Magento page in Chrome.
Right-click anywhere on the page.
From the pop-up menu, click Inspect Element
In the inspector pane, click the Network tab.
Refresh the page.
Scroll to the top of the inspector pane so you can see the URL of the page you are viewing.