Configuring Varnish as the Full Page Cache

Varnish may be one of the most interesting elements described in this book, besides Magento 2, of course. What is Varnish and why is it that important? Well, Varnish is like a Ferrari, very fast on the track but hard to maintain or tune. In technical terms, Varnish is an HTTP accelerator designed for heavy websites. Magento users love fast websites.

By default, Varnish support is now included in Magento 2. In Magento 1, we commonly used Turpentine by Nexcess (https://github.com/nexcess/magento-turpentine). The configuration of Varnish is not for the faint-hearted. Varnish includes a Varnish Configuration Language (VCL) file, which holds all the elements to be cached or not.

Setting up a Varnish server may be simple; configuring the VCL is not. Magento 2 provides a default VCL file that works out of the box, but be aware of any custom extensions or layout updates. Any customization has to be added manually in the VCL file before Varnish can cache...