[…] Guide 20 As mentioned above, Varnish Software has a Content Delivery Network “Varnish Extend” which is described as a self–assembled CDN. Varnish Extend provides traffic management through Cdexis and instructions on setting up a custom CDN. This custom CDN could be a hybrid of commercial CDNs and private servers, a private CDN, or use Varnish as an origin shield. This option allows you to create a CDN specific to your needs, however this will require a large amount of ongoing work to set up and maintain, and Varnish Extend does not assist you with the actual implementation. In addition, Varnish Extend only deploys Varnish as a reverse proxy and applications would need to separately configure other edge modules such as WAFs. Therefore Varnish Extend is only applicable for very large enterprises who want to build a custom CDN using Varnish Cache and get support directly from Varnish Software. Fastly is a Content Delivery Network which uses a modified version of Varnis h Cache for caching static and dynamic content and also offers a rules–based WAF. Fastly also includes metrics, logs, varying levels of support and SSL/TLS certificates at an additional cost to th eir m onthly f ee. While Fastly takes advantage of the speed of Varnish Cache, it can be difficult to fully configure and test Fastly’s modified VCL without paying their professional services team for assistance. Because the VCL is modified, the open source documentation and community may not be able to assist you in configurations. Fastly does offer a rules–based WAF but does not have the advanced security solutions that other CDNs offer. Section is a modern, flexible Edge Compute Platform which offers users all Va rnish Cache versions up to the newest release. Section also includes ELK Stack logs, robust Grafana metrics, free SSL/TLS certificates and certificate management, and a local Developer PoP for testing the full Varnish Cache and edge delivery setup before pushing to production. By testing the full Varnish Cache configuration locally, Section users can cache more content without th e risk of broken caching or session leakage. Section gives developers full control over their Varnish Cache configuration, so they are able to edit VCL directly to get the best possible performance out of Varnish Cache, or get assistance from the Section support team. Section is also unique for content delivery solutions in that it allows users to deploy Varnish Cache on the Section global PoP network, on a private PoP network, or on–premise with all of the DevOps tools Section’s platform provides. Points of Presence (PoPs) © Section 2019. Varnish Cache Technical Guide 21 Choosing The Right Solution For You When choosing the Varnish Cache deployment mode that is right for your application you should consider costs (including cost to maintain and set up the open source version), ease of use, accessibility to logs and metrics, and the type of support you think will work best for your development team. Writing custom Varnish Cache configurations involves learning VCL and continually tuning your VCL setup to get the best cache performance. For small organizations with fewer developer resources, a solution that provides guidance on VCL and access to Varnish […]