Chapter 9. What Does This Mean for Your Business?
By this point, you should have extracted enough information from this book to set Varnish up and to configure it appropriately. And if all goes well, your application will have been tuned a bit, as well.
But why should you do this? From a technical perspective, it’s an easy decision: to make your platform better, faster, and stronger. But from a business perspective, this can be a tough sell. If you’re a developer or sysadmin and you’re looking to convince your manager to use Varnish, this chapter will give you the ammo you need. If you’re a technical decision-maker interested in using Varnish, this chapter is your source of inspiration.
This chapter offers some success stories and a bit of practical advice on how Varnish can fit into your stack—and into your organization.
To CDN or Not to CDN
A content delivery network (CDN) is nothing more than a set of reverse caching proxies that are hosted in various locations. A CDN is the perfect example of caching on the edge.
Companies often play the CDN card because it’s offered as a service and they get support. And in many cases, they go for a CDN purely for caching, not for geo distribution. The downside is the price, but because they’re in crisis mode, money is not an issue.
At Combell and at Sentia, the brands I work for, we managed to convince some of our clients to stop paying for a CDN and just use Varnish instead. Because of the power of VCL, we were able to achieve a much better ...
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