Supercharge Your Website with the Nginx-Varnish-Nginx Stack: A Comprehensive Guide

Introduction

If you’re tech-savvy and looking to boost your website’s performance, you’ve come to the right place. This guide will walk you through setting up a high-performance stack using Nginx and Varnish. We’ll be using three Virtual Private Servers (VPS) to compartmentalize our services, similar to a Docker setup but with the flexibility to scale each service individually. This setup is particularly beneficial for those using cloud services like AWS, DigitalOcean, or Vultr.

Prerequisites

– Three VPS instances (We recommend t3.micro instances on AWS or equivalent)
– Ubuntu 20.04 or later
– Basic knowledge of Nginx and Varnish

Cost Estimation

For this setup, we used three t3.micro instances, costing around $18-$20 per month. Alternatively, you can opt for services like Lightsail, DigitalOcean, Vultr, or Linode, where you can get similar resources for $5 a month per instance.

Initial Setup

1. Update your system:

				
					apt update && apt upgrade

2. Reboot your system:

				
					reboot

3. Install Nginx, PHP, and other essential packages:

				
					apt install nginx php php-fpm php-mysql

Nginx Configuration for SSL and Reverse Proxy

1. Configure Nginx to listen on port 80 and forward to SSL (443):

				
					server {
  listen 80;
  server_name www.website.com website.com;
  location / {
    return 301 https://website.com$request_uri;
  }
}

2. In your SSL block, configure the reverse proxy to Varnish:

				
					server {
  listen 443 ssl http2;
  ...
  location / {
    proxy_pass http://local.varnish.ip.here:6081;
    ...
  }
}

Varnish Configuration

1. Install Varnish:

				
					apt install varnish

2. Update Varnish configuration:

				
					nano /etc/default/varnish

Update DAEMON_OPTS as follows:

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

3. Direct Varnish to pass requests back to Nginx:

				
					nano /etc/varnish/default.vcl

Add the following backend configuration:

				
					backend server1 {
  .host = "local.nginx.ip.here";
  .port = "8080";
}

4. Restart Varnish:

				
					service varnish restart

Database Configuration with MariaDB

1. Install MariaDB:

				
					apt install mariadb-server

2. Bind MariaDB to the local network:

				
					nano /etc/mysql/my.cnf

Add the following line:

				
					bind-address = local.mysql.ip.here

3. Restart MariaDB:

				
					service mysql restart

Conclusion

This guide is designed to complement existing tutorials on implementing Nginx and Varnish for WordPress or other web applications. By following these steps, you’ll optimize your website’s performance and achieve faster page loading times.

If you have any questions or run into issues, feel free to reach out through my contact page or LinkedIn.

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