How To: Set Up Full-Page Caching in Multi-Vendor¶

2.1. Configure Reverse Proxy Server for HTTPS¶

Varnish doesn’t support HTTPS, so if your store uses SSL certificate, it will need a reverse proxy server to work with Varnish. Any web-server can work as a reverse proxy, but we recommend nginx.

The reverse proxy server must listen to port 443 and redirect traffic to port 80 of the Varnish server. Here is an example configuration for nginx:

server {
    listen              443 ssl;
    server_name         example.com;
    server_name         www.example.com;

    ssl_certificate     /etc/nginx/certs/example.com.crt;
    ssl_certificate_key /etc/nginx/certs/example.com.key;

    location / {
        proxy_set_header Host $host;
        proxy_set_header X-Real-IP $remote_addr;
        proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
        proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-Proto $scheme;
        proxy_pass http://127.0.0.1;
        proxy_read_timeout 90;
    }
}

2.2. Configure Backend Web Server¶

The job of the backend web server is to process the requests from the Varnish server. For that purpose, the backend server must listen to port 8080. To configure the backend web-server, use the following articles:

• from Apache official documentation;
• from Nginx official documentation.

2.3. Configure Varnish¶

Now we need to teach Varnish to react properly to the responses from the backend server. To do that, modify the default.vcl file. Depending on how Varnish was installed, default.vcl might be located in different places:

• /etc/varnish/default.vcl
• /usr/local/etc/varnish/default.vcl

Replace that file with our default.vcl for Multi-Vendor.

If the backend server and Varnish are on different physical servers or use the ports different from those we listed above, please change the configuration accordingly:

• Backend server address:

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

  • host—the IP address of the backend server in the internal network.
  • port—the port that the backend server listens to.

• Security settings:

  acl internal {
      "127.0.0.1";
  }
  

  This section lists the IP addresses in the internal network that Varnish will consider safe. These IP addresses will be able to send cache invalidation requests.

  Important

  Cache invalidation requests are sent by a PHP script. If you process PHP on a separate server, then its IP address must be added to this list.