Using APC and Varnish with Plesk 12/Ubuntu

[Jeff12]

There were a couple of threads on this, so sorry for reposting the same topic again. In a nutshell, it looks like Varnish just doesn't work with Plesk, I tried all recipes both from this forum and from elsewhere and nothing works for me. Considering the installation steps are quite straightforward it's either some Pleask-specific steps are missing or it just doesn't work with Plesk...
(example: http://talk.plesk.com/threads/step-...and-integrate-varnish-with-plesk-12-x.310544/)

Igor wrote before that "Varnish is not officially supported by Plesk." but if somebody here was successful with Varnish installation on Plesk, could you please share your knowledge, it will be highly appreciated

Next to APC (re thread http://talk.plesk.com/threads/how-to-install-an-apc-with-plesk.330152/)
Considering Igor's "APC is not officially supported and was not tested with Plesk", I wanted to ask for feedback here, anybody who successfully installed APC on Plesk:
- did you follow the instructions by @UFHH01 in the thread above? Any other steps or other instructions?
- did you have any issues after installing APC?
- what kind of performance improvement (if any) did you get?

Thanks.

 

[Jeff12]

Dead silence here... This could mean one of two things: either nobody managed to configure Varnish and/or APC to work with Plesk12 or there is nobody here to read these forums...

 

[IgorG]

This could mean one of two things: either nobody managed to configure Varnish and/or APC to work with Plesk12 or there is nobody here to read these forums...

Or no one needs this...
Have you checked votes for this feature on plesk.uservoice.com?

 

[Jeff12]

Thank you Igor, I wasn't even aware of plesk.uservoice.com. I am really surprised with low votes for Varnish support... there are few alternatives to Varnish in terms of speeding up webpages and neither is supported by (or tested with) Pleask12. Site loading speed is quickly becoming one of the key factors in SERP and Varnish is the simple and efficient solution. Not to mention it's free...
I am also very surprised with Sergey's question "Could you please explain expected advantage over Apache + Nginx?", I would certainly expect Director of Plesk Program Management to know the difference... It was well summarized by Ben in the comments:

"Your Website is much faster with varnish. Varnish is not about heavy load sites like Apache+Nginx its all about fast webpages. Its much faster than php based alternatives. All major sites using varnish or spdy."

 

[UFHH01]

Hi Jeff12,

I would certainly expect Director of Plesk Program Management to know the difference... It was well summarized by Ben in the comments:

"Your Website is much faster with varnish. Varnish is not about heavy load sites like Apache+Nginx its all about fast webpages. Its much faster than php based alternatives. All major sites using varnish or spdy."

First of all, you seem to misunderstand the question from @Sergey L , by assuming, that he doesn't know the difference, or (dis)advantages by using varnish. The question was meant to explane, WHY it would be usefull and necessary for Plesk - users, which wasn't at all described by the uservoice - suggestion, neither does any comment explain, why it could be usefull for Plesk - users, who have a multi-domain - environment... which is is the case for most Plesk - users.

The statement "Varnish is used by a great number of high-profile, high-traffic websites including online newspaper sites such as The New York Times, The Guardian, The Hindu, Corriere della Sera, social media and content sites such as Wikipedia, Facebook, Twitter, Vimeo, Tumblr and many more. Of the Top 10K sites in the web, around a tenth use the software." from "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Varnish_(software)" is not at all representive for a Plesk - user and the wiki - page forgets as well to state, that ALL of the listet pages use load - balancing over several servers to achieve a good performance and use several backends on different servers and IP-pools, which is again not a common "Plesk - user" - environment.


A huge contra against varnish is the NON-existent SSL - support. Be aware that there are lots of Plesk - users, who host shops, CMS, secure content - so your varnish implementation will slow down these pages/SSL encrypted requests. In addition, you have to use for example "pound" ... another reverse proxy, to serve SSL - content - your speed advantage for varnish will be gone and another possible reason for mis-configurations will be implemented. The time-investement for investigations in case of issues/problems/failures for server - administrators will increase as well, when implementing varnish/pound, percentage multiplied to existing domains and IPs - - - in MY opinion, there are too much dis-advantages for varnish!

 

[Jeff12]

... A huge contra against varnish is the NON-existent SSL - support. Be aware that there are lots of Plesk - users, who host shops, CMS, secure content - so your varnish implementation will slow down these pages/SSL encrypted requests.

Lack of SSL support is certainly a serious disadvantage for Varnish, yet only 45% of top 1 million websites have SSL enabled (see https://jve.linuxwall.info/blog/index.php?post/TLS_Survey). Assuming that the same percentage applies to Plesk-hosted websites, then 55% of them would still benefit from using Varnish...