Install Varnish Cache 5.2 for Apache on Debian and Ubuntu

Varnish Cache (also called Varnish) is an open source, high-performance HTTP accelerator with a modern design. It stores the cache in memory ensuring that web server resources are not wasted in creating the same web page over and over again when requested by a client.

It can be configured to run in front of a web server to serve pages in a much faster way thus making websites load quickly. It supports load balancing with health checking of backends, URL rewriting, graceful handling of “dead” backends and offers partial support for ESI (Edge Side Includes).

In our series of articles concerning Varnish Cache, we showed how to setup Varnish for Nginx and Varnish for Apache web servers on a CentOS 7 system.

In this article, we will explain how to install and configure Varnish Cache 5.2 as a front-end to Apache HTTP server on a Debian and Ubuntu systems.

Requirements:

1. A Ubuntu system installed with LAMP Stack
2. A Debian system installed with LAMP Stack
3. A Debian/Ubuntu system with static IP address

Step 1: Install Varnish Cache on Debian and Ubuntu

1. Luckily, there are pre-compiled packages for latest version of Varnish Cache 5 (i.e 5.2 at the time of writing), so you need to add official Varnish repository in your system as shown below.

$ curl -L https://packagecloud.io/varnishcache/varnish5/gpgkey | sudo apt-key add -

Important: If you are using Debian, install debian-archive-keyring package for verifying the official Debian repositories.

$ sudo apt-get install debian-archive-keyring

2. After that, create a file named /etc/apt/sources.list.d/varnishcache_varnish5.list that contains the repository configuration below. Make sure to replace ubuntu and xenial with your Linux distribution and version.

deb https://packagecloud.io/varnishcache/varnish5/ubuntu/ xenial main  
deb-src https://packagecloud.io/varnishcache/varnish5/ubuntu/ xenial  main

3. Next, update software package repository and install varnish cache using the following commands.

$ sudo apt update
$ sudo apt install varnish

4. After installing Varnish Cache, the main configuration files will be installed under /etc/varnish/ directory.

• /etc/default/varnish – the varnish environment configuration file.
• /etc/varnish/default.vcl – main varnish configuration file, it is written using vanish configuration language (VCL).
• /etc/varnish/secret – varnish secret file.

To confirm that the Varnish installation was successful, run the following command to see the version.

$ varnishd -V

Step 2: Configure Apache to Work With Varnish Cache

5. Now you need to configure Apache to work with Varnish Cache. By default Apache listens on port 80, you need change the default Apache port to 8080 to enable it run behind Varnish caching.

So open the Apache ports configuration file /etc/apache2/ports.conf and find the line listen 80, then change it to listen 8080.

Alternatively, just run the sed command to change port 80 to 8080 as follows.

$ sudo sed -i "s/Listen 80/Listen 8080/" /etc/apache2/ports.conf

6. You also need to make changes to your virtual host file located in /etc/apache2/sites-available/.

$ sudo vi /etc/apache2/sites-available/000-default.conf

Change the port number to 8080.

<VirtualHost *:8080>
	#virtual host configs here
</VirtualHost>

7. On systems using systemd, the /etc/default/varnish environment configuration file is deprecated and is not considered any more.

You need to copy the file /lib/systemd/system/varnish.service to /etc/systemd/system/ and make a few changes to it.

$ sudo cp /lib/systemd/system/varnish.service /etc/systemd/system/
$ sudo vi /etc/systemd/system/varnish.service

You need to modify the service directive ExecStart, it defines the varnish daemon runtime options. Set the value of the -a flag, which defines the port varnish listens to, from 6081 to 80.

8. To effect the above changes to the varnish service unit file, run the following systemctl command:

$ sudo systemctl daemon-reload

9. Then, configure Apache as a backend server for Varnish proxy, in the /etc/varnish/default.vcl configuration file.

# sudo vi /etc/varnish/default.vcl 

Using the backend section, you can define the host IP and port for your content server. The following is the default backend configuration which uses the localhost (set this to point to your actual content server).

backend default {
    .host = "127.0.0.1";
    .port = "8080";
}

10. Once you have performed all the above configuration, restart Apache and Varnish daemon by typing following commands.

$ sudo systemctl restart apache
$ sudo systemctl start varnish
$ sudo systemctl enable varnish
$ sudo systemctl status varnish

Step 3: Test Varnish Cache on Apache

11. Finally, test if Varnish cache is enabled and working with the Apache HTTP server using the cURL command below to view the HTTP header.

$ curl -I http://localhost

That’s It! For more information about Varnish Cache, visit – https://github.com/varnishcache/varnish-cache

In this tutorial, we have explained how to setup Varnish Cache 5.2 for Apache HTTP server on Debian and Ubuntu systems. You can share any thoughts or queries with us via the feedback from below.