Request: Tutorial for installing Varnish with i-mscp

veg-grower · Jun 21st 2013

Hello

I am interested in trying Varnish with i-mscp RC Release: 1.1.0-rc2.3 . I have searched the forum for some information on how to install it but I have not found out on how this can be accomplished. I would like to request please a quick tutorial on how this can be done with i-mscp. It would be a very useful tutorial for everyone using i-mscp and the apache2 web server or vps.

Thanks in advance for your time and help.

**anarking** · Jun 22nd 2013

Okay I'll put one together when I have some free time, as I've set it up a few times and it works very well. There are a feww things to do to make sure all functions keep working when creating/modifying sites so it doesn't revert to old settings (mainly the port change is all). It's not too difficult, and runs very quickly

veg-grower · Jun 22nd 2013

Thank you anarking that would be most appreciated

**Nuxwin** · Jun 22nd 2013

Quote from anarking

Okay I'll put one together when I have some free time, as I've set it up a few times and it works very well. There are a feww things to do to make sure all functions keep working when creating/modifying sites so it doesn't revert to old settings (mainly the port change is all). It's not too difficult, and runs very quickly

Hello ;

If you write a good howto for i-MSCP, I can create a plugin easily.

Thank you for using i-MSCP

**anarking** · Jul 30th 2013

Pardon the wait, it is not a short tutorial let's begin...

apt-get install varnish libapache2-mod-rpaf

(rpaf is used for correct recognition of user ips that are proxied back to apache via varnish, otherwise authentication issues)

edit /etc/default/varnish

make sure START=yes (line

change

Code

DAEMON_OPTS="-a :6081 \

to

Code

DAEMON_OPTS="-a :80 \

(note: there are many other options here, amount of memory to allocate, whether to use file as storage or direct-to-memory, how many thread pools/workers, and what config files to use)

Example:
default is:

Code

DAEMON_OPTS="-a :6081 \ -T localhost:6082 \ -f /etc/varnish/default.vcl \ -S /etc/varnish/secret \ -s malloc,256m"

modified (big server):

Code

DAEMON_OPTS="-a :80 \ -T localhost:6082 \ -f /etc/varnish/default.vcl \ -S /etc/varnish/secret \ -s file,/var/lib/varnish/$INSTANCE/varnish_storage.bin,2G \ -p thread_pool_add_delay=2 \ -p thread_pools=8 \ -p thread_pool_min=200 \ -p thread_pool_max=5000 \ -p session_linger=50 \ -p sess_workspace=262144"

thread pools should normally be the # of CPU cores. but the only requirement here is port changed to 80.

modify /etc/apache2/ports.conf
change:

Code

Listen 80

to

Code

Listen 81

edit all site config files in /etc/apache2/sites-available/ including 00_master.conf and 00_nameserver.conf (00_modcband.conf will not be edited)
change:

Code

NameVirtualHost <theserversip>:80

to

Code

NameVirtualHost *:81

for scripting, perhaps use:

Code

sed -i "s/$(ifconfig eth0 | grep 'inet addr:' | cut -d: -f2 | cut -d' ' -f1):80/*:81/g" /etc/apache2/sites-available/*

NOTE: for servers with multiple IPs being hosted, there will be different configurations needed in Varnish and in apache

edit all site config files in /etc/apache2/sites-available/ EXCLUDING 00_nameserver.conf and 00_modcband.conf
add: (start at line 2?)

Code

RPAFenable OnRPAFsethostname OnRPAFproxy_ips 127.0.0.1

edit /etc/apache2/mods-available/rpaf.conf
file should be:

Code

<IfModule mod_rpaf.c>RPAFenable OnRPAFsethostname OnRPAFproxy_ips 127.0.0.1 ::1</IfModule>

change /etc/varnish/default.vcl
make sure backend default is this:

Code

backend default { .host = "127.0.0.1"; .port = "81";}include "/etc/varnish/imscp/master.vcl";

this can be the entire file, nothing else is needed. you must mkdir /etc/varnish/imscp and create master.vcl. see following post for example master.vcl

we include master.vcl, as many settings can be put in there, and must, for caching to work and Varnish to know what domains to accept. this is where it gets tricky.

the proper way to then configure is to include other specific config files, which can then have the caching specifics that say what to cache for each site, and MUST declare the URL of each site that is being passed back to Apache. and for Varnish to be effective, there must be more config to set what static content to strip of cookies and cache (images, video, archives), what pages to bypass (login), etc. etc. That is a complete other article of reading

Quote

NOTE FOR DEV:
For complete integration with i-MSCP, I believe we should have the option "Varnish enabled?" for each customer. If enabled, this would add an entry in /etc/varnish/default.vcl that says

Code

include "/etc/varnish/imscp/customerdomain.vcl";

with a newline of the same for every customer. then each of those configuration files can then be edited by a customer from within imscp. (maybe /etc/varnish/imscp/customerdomain/config.vcl if needed to better separate permissions)
It should use the same method as others handled by i-MSCP (parts/working in /etc/imscp/varnish) to have a base config that inserts {DOMAIN_NAME}.

Now, to make i-MSCP respect the new port changes when using the panel...

change .pm files for apache types in /var/www/imscp/engine/PerlLib/Servers/httpd/
for each type (php-fpm, fcgi, itk) change (for example) ../httpd/apache_php_fpm.pm and ../httpd/apache_php_fpm/installer.pm
so...
change apache_php_fpm.pm
from

Code

$content.= "NameVirtualHost $_:443\n" for @{$data->{'SSLIPS'}}; $content.= "NameVirtualHost $_:80\n" for @{$data->{'IPS'}};

to

Code

$content.= "NameVirtualHost \*:443\n" for @{$data->{'SSLIPS'}}; $content.= "NameVirtualHost \*:81\n" for @{$data->{'IPS'}};

change apache_php_fpm/installer.pm
from

Code

$rdata =~ s/^(NameVirtualHost\s+\*:80)/#$1/gmi;

to

Code

$rdata =~ s/^(NameVirtualHost\s+\*:81)/#$1/gmi;

TO SCRIPT:

Code

sed -i "s/:80/:81/g" /var/www/imscp/engine/PerlLib/Servers/httpd/*/installer.pm

Code

sed -i 's/$_/\\\*/g' /var/www/imscp/engine/PerlLib/Servers/httpd/*.pm

change /etc/imscp/apache/parts/domain*
from:

Code

<VirtualHost {DOMAIN_IP}:80>

to:

Code

<VirtualHost *:81>RPAFenable OnRPAFsethostname OnRPAFproxy_ips 127.0.0.1

change /etc/imscp/apache/parts/*_ssl.tpl
from:

Code

<VirtualHost {DOMAIN_IP}:443>

to:

Code

<VirtualHost *:443>RPAFenable OnRPAFsethostname OnRPAFproxy_ips 127.0.0.1

change /etc/imscp/apache/01_awstats.conf
from:

Code

NameVirtualHost 127.0.0.1:80<VirtualHost 127.0.0.1:80>

to:

Code

NameVirtualHost 127.0.0.1:81<VirtualHost 127.0.0.1:81>

change /etc/imscp/apache2/00_master.conf
from:

Code

<VirtualHost {DOMAIN_IP}:80>

to:

Code

<VirtualHost *:81>RPAFenable OnRPAFsethostname OnRPAFproxy_ips 127.0.0.1

change /etc/imscp/apache2/00_master_ssl.conf
from:

Code

<VirtualHost {DOMAIN_IP}:443>

to:

Code

<VirtualHost *:443>RPAFenable OnRPAFsethostname OnRPAFproxy_ips 127.0.0.1

cp -p /etc/apache2/sites-available/* /etc/imscp/apache/working/
service apache restart
service varnish restart

Then it should all be fully functional. I think that's everything. Like I said, for use with multiple IP's, it would need a slightly different setup with the variables, I'll think about that some other time
[hr]
Here is the good master.vcl varnish config file for use that covers most caching scenarios, you can see, just replace with your domain name(s).

return(pass); means to pass it through and do not cache at all.

also includes an example of not caching a particular page (login.php).

This could easily be ported to i-MSCP handling for customers' varnish .vcl files by replacing the domain names with {DOMAIN_NAME} (as well as ALIAS and subdomain), to generate the new /etc/varnish/imscp/{DOMAIN_NAME}/config.vcl for each customer

Code

sub vcl_recv {
remove req.http.X-Forwarded-For;
set req.http.X-Forwarded-For = client.ip;
set req.http.Host = regsub(req.http.Host, "www\.", "");
### do not cache these rules:
if (req.request != "GET" && req.request != "HEAD") {
return(pass);
}
if (req.http.Authenticate || req.http.Authorization) {
return(pass);
}
### don't cache authenticated sessions
if (req.http.Cookie && req.http.Cookie ~ "authtoken=") {
return(pipe);
}
if (req.http.host ~ "^somedomain.com(:[0-9]+)?$") {
set req.backend = default;
}
else if (req.http.host ~ "^anotherdomain.com(:[0-9]+)?$") {
set req.backend = default;
}
else if (req.http.host ~ "^non-cached-domain.com(:[0-9]+)?$") {
set req.backend = default;
return(pass);
}
else { set req.backend = default;}
# Don't cache login.php
if (req.url ~ "login.php") {
return (pass);
}
## Remove has_js and Google Analytics cookies.
set req.http.Cookie = regsuball(req.http.Cookie, "(^|;\s*)(__[a-z]+|has_js)=[^;]*", "");
set req.http.Cookie = regsuball(req.http.Cookie, "(^|;\s*)(__utma|__utmb|__utmc|__utmv|__utmz|__utms)=[^;]+;?", "");
# Properly handle different encoding types
if (req.http.Accept-Encoding) {
if (req.url ~ "\.(jpg|jpeg|png|gif|gz|tgz|bz2|tbz|mp3|ogg|swf)$") {
# No point in compressing these
remove req.http.Accept-Encoding;
} elsif (req.http.Accept-Encoding ~ "gzip") {
set req.http.Accept-Encoding = "gzip";
} elsif (req.http.Accept-Encoding ~ "deflate") {
set req.http.Accept-Encoding = "deflate";
} else {
# unkown algorithm
remove req.http.Accept-Encoding;
}
}
# Serve objects up to 5 minutes past their expiry if the backend
# is slow to respond.
if (req.backend.healthy)
{
set req.grace = 60s;
} else
{
set req.grace = 5m;
}
# Cache things with these extensions
if (req.request == "GET" && req.url ~ "\.(js)") {
unset req.http.cookie;
return (lookup);
}
## images
if (req.request == "GET" && req.url ~ "\.(gif|jpg|jpeg|bmp|png|tiff|tif|ico|img|tga|wmf|swf)$") {
unset req.http.cookie;
return (lookup);
}
## various other content pages
if (req.request == "GET" && req.url ~ "\.(css|html)$") {
unset req.http.cookie;
return (lookup);
}
## multimedia dont cache
if (req.request == "GET" && req.url ~ "\.(svg|mp3|mp4|m4a|ogg|mov|avi|wmv)$") {
return (pass);
}
## xml
if (req.request == "GET" && req.url ~ "\.(xml)$") {
unset req.http.cookie;
return (lookup);
}
return(lookup);
}
###############
sub vcl_fetch {
unset beresp.http.Server;
set beresp.http.Server = "Varnish";
set beresp.grace = 10m;
if (req.request == "GET" && req.url ~ "\.(gif|jpg|jpeg|bmp|png|tiff|tif|ico|img|tga|wmf|swf)$") {
unset beresp.http.set-cookie;
set beresp.ttl = 24h;
}
## various other content pages
if (req.request == "GET" && req.url ~ "\.(css|html)$") {
unset beresp.http.set-cookie;
set beresp.ttl = 24h;
}
if (req.request == "GET" && req.url ~ "\.(js)$") {
unset beresp.http.set-cookie;
set beresp.ttl = 24h;
}
## xml
if (req.request == "GET" && req.url ~ "\.(xml)$") {
unset beresp.http.set-cookie;
set beresp.ttl = 24h;
}
return(deliver);
}
###############
sub vcl_deliver {
#add cache hit data
#set resp.http.X-Served-By = server.hostname;
if (obj.hits > 0) {
set resp.http.X-Cache = "HIT";
set resp.http.X-Cache-Hits = obj.hits;
} else {
set resp.http.X-Cache = "MISS";
}
}

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veg-grower · Jul 30th 2013

WOW thats one big tutorial!

Thank you so much for your help. I will give it a go and see what sort of results I get.

My main aim is to squeeze (as in Debian (no pun intended, well not really)) as much out of a 1 gig ram VPS as I can. So my ideal option would be apache optimized with nginx as proxy but that is still under development. Or just plain nginx but I dont know how my script would work as it is heavy htaccess relient. So for now I am looking at alternatives and I have read good things about Varnish but never knew how to set it up with i-mscp. Until now

Again thank you so much for what you have done anarking it is most appreciated. I hope it helps many users of i-mscp as well as myself When I have a little spare time I will give this ago

Thanks

**anarking** · Jul 30th 2013

i run a number of 1GB VPS' with i-MSCP for people (I run a small "datacenter"). with basic optimization and no varnish, it's very powerful. with varnish, you have to be careful and very specifically configure it, when using small RAM systems. it will depend on what kind of datasets and things on your site. images, js, css, html, or a lot of database activity. if database activity, varnish doesn't help very much, you want an opcode cacher, I recommend Xcache. When using varnish and any caching, 1GB of ram isn't very much, so like I said, be careful, 256mb for apache, 256mb for varnish, 128mb for Xcache. Varnish handles static files (a lot like nginx, so it doesn't make much sense to use nginx with it when already using apache, speed gains would be minimal) and so will generally use more memory to keep the files in, where Xcache doesn't need much, as data out of the database is usually small.

apache + varnish will do what you want the best. if you can get it tweaked well and keep most in memory, and the provider's pipe is good enough, you can serve a hundred thousand visitors off a 1GB VPS. it becomes more about CPU than ram at that point (apache likes cpu, p.s. make sure to use php-fpm for xcache to work)

veg-grower · Jul 30th 2013

Again thanks for the detailed and informative advice it is most appreciated.

I will be using a VPS for mainly static html/php files and maybe a 'few' wordpress sites. At the moment it is a bit of a challenge I have set myself as I am learning to setup a good VPS and then migrate away from shared hosting. I have installed i-mscp but not really done any major optimization so that is something I will try first and see what results that gives me first before I start to think about anything more advanced if you can run a good number of static sites on a optimized i-mscp with good optimization. Your advice has been very informative. Thanks

**anarking** · Sep 16th 2013

i'm using my own tutorial to make sure i get all the little pieces haha. will also check and make sure nothing has changed with it for latest git master.

Akangage · Nov 23rd 2013

Waoowww......... its really fast on my VPS, but somehow i need to do something with SEO to be run better with varnish.
My forum running like F1 speed amazing.

Request: Tutorial for installing Varnish with i-mscp

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