Ah ok So you use a clean server without Plesk.
I love Plesk and use it for "simple applications" that are running good with Apache or Nginx.
Also with Nginx you can turn on its cache and have some more performance out of it. So for normal Websites Plesk is perfect.
When it comes to Shops (but also Drupal Websites etc) I personally prefer Varnish cach due to these benefits:
- mostly fully integrated in good eCommerce Shops (like Magento v2, Shopware 6 etc)
- much more configuratable then nginx when it comes to advanced configurations
- slower without cache, but faster with
Downside of Varnish is:
- needs SSL/TLS termination infront of it. I would recommend "Nginx", "Pound" (based on HA-Proxy) or "Nuster"
- not best performance for anything else then cache, but at caching its perfect.
So your setup could be (for example):
- Nginx --> Varnish --> (Nginx/Apache)
- Pound --> Varnish --> (Nginx/Apache)
- Nuster --> Varnish --> (Nginx/Apache)
Where the first webserver is always
just for SSL/TLS termination, otherwise Varnish will not unleash its full power.
Keeping in mind that Pound, Nginx and Nuster are already good Webserver and bring good Caching with them already such a setup just makes sense if you hjave to manage high loads or your Application is very optimized in using Varnish and not one of the other ones.
So if you already need to do a individual setup go for the best what is maintainable with acceptable effort. (probably Number 1 with Nginx)
I see that Nginx is doing many things very good, but apparently its not the best when it comes to caching/performance in
real World, every time I compare pure Nginx Setup to varnish varnish outperforms Nginx is realworld experience uder same conditions. Also: pls do not trust any benchmarks you do not have also run on your own
Specially for Magento v2, Shopware 6, Drupal and TYPO3 users the lack of Varnish Cache in Plesk will be a pain but for you as Meganto v2 user you will also miss Redis as its highly recommended forMagento v2 users due to the fact the DB will be a bottleneck and using Docker is no solution
So yes for applications that need Redis or Varnish or both together I would recommend an individual Setup. For applications that are performant and suitable to run with Nginx (or Nginx Cachinging) Plesk is the most simple way to go and you will not have to worry about putting to many time into maintaining the Servers etc.
Also there already have been (back in 2016) a topic with a poll. (
LINK)
45,9% voted for Nginx
26,2% voted for Varnish
24,6% wanted both or at least one
For me they are not directly comparable even if they both are in some ways working similar. But with just offering one of both Plesk is making itself unattractive for users who need Varnish. IMO it would be the best to support both. But letting the user decide which one to use on which domain.
Like right now with Apache. You can decide if you want to use:
- Apache only
- Nginx only
- Nginx (static) + Apache (dynamic content)
If they add Varnish and Redis to the Core of Plesk this would be a huge improvement and would make Plesk very attractive for a whole new group of customers which they atm are not attractive to.
I think there should be a dedicated Thread where to talk about "Webservers" and "DB/Object Caches"
But as you mentioned Magento v2 Redis is the way to go and I would prefer it over Memcached, even if Memcached is multithreaded.
But pls always make your own opinion and make you own experiences. Do your own Benchmarks and come to your own conclusions
That to be said, in some cases Varnish is not needed, or the benefit is not worth the expenditure. But in other cases its definitely worth it.