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Shared Varnish Caching
If you find that your site runs slowly and you've turned on all the CMS specific caching features available to you, it might be time to use our shared varnish server. Varnish helps manage higher traffic websites by creating a cache of all the previous page loads and serving them up with a minimal amount of processing. In order to hook into our shared varnish instance, you'll need to make some changes to your DNS entries, and a support team member will need to add a file to our varnish server (currently dolores.mayfirst.org).
Changing DNS Entries
Visit the control panel and the hosting order that should use varnish caching. Change the DNS entry for the appropriate domains. For example, you might want
Domain Name | IP Address |
myexample.org | 209.51.180.234 |
www.myexample.org | 209.51.180.234 |
myexample.com | 209.51.180.234 |
www.myexample.com | 209.51.180.234 |
example.mayfirst.org | doesn't change |
Notice that the last entry example.mayfirst.org did not change. This domain can serve as a direct link to the server in case anything goes awry.
Modify Your Config Files
Some CMS's require you to modify your configuration files. You should check to make sure you have the correct configurations set.
For Mediawiki
In your LocalSettings.php, you'll need to add the following:
$wgUseSquid = true; $wgSquidServers = array('209.51.180.234:80');
For Drupal
- Drupal 6 requires the Pressflow distribution.
- Drupal 7 should work fine using the standard MF/PL web app.
Wordpress
You shouldn't need to take any special steps for wordpress caching. Though please make sure to turn off W3 Total Cache before using our shared varnish server.
Support Team
Our current varnish server is dolores. You'll need to make the following configuration changes for each new hosting order.
- Create a new vcl file for the domain, i.e. /etc/varnish/vhosts/domain-name.vcl
- Copy the format of a current vcl file, depending on the CMS.
- Add an include line in /etc/varnish/vhosts/vhosts-list.vcl for the file you created above.
- run /etc/init.d/varnish reload
NOTE: The above instructions should ultimately become a part of puppet or red.