Sync up: Akamai Connector for Varnish takes a load off

A few months ago, we announced the Akamai Connector for Varnish. We released it on a limited scale to give users the chance to test it out and see what it could do for them. Now the release goes wide. All Akamai customers who also use Varnish can get the Akamai Connector for Varnish to leverage the scalability and performance of the Akamai platform within the familiar Varnish VCL interface.

What is Akamai Connector for Varnish?

Let’s say you’re already using Varnish Cache or Varnish Plus and want to save yourself the effort of duplicating your work and logic, such as caching policies or best practices, between Varnish and your Akamai CDN. You, in effect, want to bridge the two.

In the past, synchronizing Akamai and Varnish settings would have forced you to do the work twice, ensuring that your logic carried over into both systems. Now, with the Akamai Connector for Varnish, this work is done for you. Essentially, by employing the Akamai Connector, you continue doing what you have always done with Varnish and VCL as your interface, and the Akamai Connector ensures that your settings in Varnish are not only carried over onto your Akamai platform but that the benefits of this union are amplified.

Amplifying Varnish with Akamai

The bottom line here is that you continue to focus on just your Varnish layer and the Akamai layer automatically gets the benefit. The major benefits of implementing the connector are twofold:

• Performance and control: By integrating Varnish and Akamai cache layers, you are effectively offloading extra work from the origin and sending it to the edge, saving resources. This also enables more granular cache control for more finely tuned caching for specific use cases.

• Simplifying operations: Gain consistency and operational productivity with less effort. Joint customers and users of Akamai and Varnish can avoid duplicate work, synchronizing caching rules between Varnish and Akamai cache layers by managing Akamai cache settings using the already familiar VCL.

Akamai Connector for Varnish is available now, and at no cost to Akamai customers.