An online business would suffer heavily in the absence of a failover mechanism. The revenue losses can be to the tune of billions, even if the website is down for a few minutes. The speed of the website would be another crucial factor that contributes negatively to the revenues. The Magento stores can kill these two birds viz. speed and failover mechanisms, with one stone, i.e., varnish cache. They can do so by hiring a magento development company in india for configuring the varnish cache. Let us first try to understand the terms - caching & failover, elaborately.
Introduction To Failover & Caching
Failover is a mechanism through which a system can work seamlessly in case of a malfunction or failure such as a server crash, power outage, etc. The system switches over to the backup plan if something goes out of the way without the users even noticing. On the other hand, caching is a technique to enhance the speed of information access. It is a high-speed layer for storing frequently used data, temporarily. This reduces the load on the server as the future requests for access to data are not required to be processed by the server if it is already available in the cache. It allows us to reuse the previously retrieved data, and hence the speed. All online stores ought to have a failover mechanism as well as a caching mechanism. Magento supports caching through varnish cache along with some other in-built caches.
An Overview of Varnish Cache
Whenever a user sends enters a URL, an HTTP request for a webpage is generated. A webpage is comprised of HTML, CSS, JavaScript, as well as image files. This, in turn, converts a single request into multiple requests to the webserver. The varnish is a full-page cache that stores the entire webpage, i.e., all the components of the webpage called assets during the first request. Any further request to the assets available in varnish are loaded quickly from the cache itself, and server involvement is not required. So, all the requests are first intercepted by the varnish cache resulting in faster response times and reduced server load. Along with this, varnish also provides a way to detect changes in the files available in the cache. These changes are reflected by either refreshing the browser cache on the client machine or upon encountering a new request from the client. However, it is suggested to hire magento development services in india for fetching maximum benefits from varnish cache.
Advantages of Using Varnish Cache
Let us go through some of the major benefits associated with the usage of varnish cache in a Magento store. An obvious benefit of using a varnish cache is the improved page loading speed, which is a crucial performance metric for a website, affecting critical factors like conversion rate, user engagement, browsing experience, etc. Varnish cache trims down the server usage resulting in significant savings of up to 80% in infrastructure costs. Varnish boosts up the page load speeds not only on a personal computer but also on mobile devices raking up the browsing experience. This is pivotal for increasing the session duration and, ultimately, sales. Organic traffic is another important factor contributing positively to the revenue of the organization. Organic traffic is largely the result of better search rankings. Google considers the speed and performance of a website as important parameters for finalizing the search ranks. Varnish cache can only have a positive impact on SEO as it enhances the speed of the website considerably.
Varnish Cache for Failover
Varnish cache is also used as a failover mechanism in case of a crashed or an overloaded web server. Varnish performs the load balancing act in round-robin fashion. For this, port number 80 shall be earmarked for varnish for listening to requests. This refrain webserver from using other ports, making troubleshooting easier. Varnish checks for availability of web servers every five seconds using its health check feature and cease the use of any web server which is overloaded or faulty. One can also limit the webserver load using varnish by adjusting the timeout value. Upon reaching the timeout threshold, varnish switches load to another web server. Varnish reduces the number of web servers required for the website apart from accelerating the response time.
Varnish vis-a-vis Built-in Cache
Magento supports FPC (Full Page Cache) functionality with two options viz. in-built and varnish cache. The varnish cache offers various additional functionalities not included in the built-in cache. Varnish handles all the incoming requests, and Magento is queried only if the content is not available in the cache. Apart from this, it can also fetch dynamic content (like shopping cart items) directly from the Magento server. There is no wonder that varnish cache is a lot faster than all default in-built caches.
Final Remarks
Businesses are incessantly looking for impeccable website performance along with a reliable failsafe mechanism. They can rely on the Varnish cache to crack the performance and failsafe codes. However, be advised not to use varnish just as a caching application. Make sure that it is placed in front of Magento and handle all the incoming requests. Varnish cache should always be included in a Magento store as an inseparable part of it.
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