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Varnish 6.0 adds greater security and cloud support

mike-johnston Profile

Varnish Software today announced a new release of its Varnish platform for API and web acceleration, streaming and DIY content delivery networks (CDNs). Varnish 6.0, the commercial version of Varnish Cache, includes new features for security, cloud deployments, cache invalidation and full HTTP/2 support. The new release is currently under limited availability.

” New features help to prevent cache leaks, support dynamic cloud environments including Kubernetes and facilitate efficient cache updates “

Varnish 6.0 provides new capabilities for overcoming challenges in the dynamic online world, helping organisations to manage their websites, apps and content delivery faster, safer, at a lower cost and more flexibly. Over recent years, mobile apps and bots have contributed to extremely heavy website traffic. Video, images and streaming consume ever-growing amounts of bandwidth. At the same time, cache leaks like Cloudbleed are a growing threat. And new regulations including GDPR herald a new era of security requirements.

“Organizations find themselves having to fight traffic, bandwidth and security challenges while continually satisfying consumers’ hunger for fresh content,” said Lars Larsson CEO, Varnish Software. “Our latest release provides easy-to-use tools to help organisations alleviate these burdens and maintain future-proof web presences and content delivery infrastructures.”

The new features include:

  • Varnish Total Encryption – offers PCI and GDPR compliance. It applies a unique encryption key to every cache object following the Advanced Encryption Standard AES-256. Each request is assigned one key based on the unique fingerprint of that request, ensuring that the visitor only has access to the very specific piece of content held in the cache. The feature is VCL based and can be tailored to customers’ specific needs. Currently this is limited to beta-testers. Interested Varnish users should contact Varnish Software for more information.
  • Varnish Discovery – built for highly dynamic cloud environments, such as Kubernetes or AWS, this enables Varnish High Availability (HA) to detect and adjust to changes in the environment as it scales up or down – for example, if site traffic or bandwidth requirements reach a certain level. Varnish Discovery comes with built-in support for the Varnish Administration Console (VAC), DNS and Kubernetes. Support for other new service catalogs can be easily added.
  • Varnish Broadcaster – ensures that organizations can update their sites and app content fast and seamlessly on all channels. It offers an easy to way to invalidate the cache through an API, similar to the existing Super Fast Purger (SFP). Unlike SFP, it runs as a standalone, request-agnostic solution not tied to the VAC. It broadcasts any HTTP request, including PURGEs, BANs and xkey requests for cache invalidation to multiple instances of Varnish in multiple locations, including cloud instances.

HTTP/2 support – following an extended testing period, Varnish Software now fully supports HTTP/2.

Availability and pricing
Varnish is available from varnish-software.com on a subscription-based pricing model starting at $30,000 for a three-node cluster. Varnish is also available at an affordable hourly rate from AWS, Google and Microsoft Azure. The latest release Varnish 6.0 is currently under limited availability and will be generally available during spring 2018.