The Varnish Enterprise advantage

In our final blog in the series about differences between Varnish Enterprise and Varnish Cache, let’s highlight two major aspects of Varnish Enterprise that will be vital for many use cases. (For more, see Post 1: Project or Product and Post 2: Support Services)

Performance

Varnish Enterprise is about extreme performance, with many features and optimizations dedicated to this. The performance difference between Varnish Enterprise and Varnish Cache-based solutions is not just an increment or small percentage. Each aspect of these improvements results, when taken together, in huge performance increases. One example:

With in-process TLS, Varnish Enterprise reaches 500Gbps from a single server

Varnish Enterprise offers native TLS termination, which streamlines web processes by removing the additional network hop necessary when using an external TLS terminator, though it offers this too and can reach 500Gbps when using it. Bringing TLS functionality into the core Varnish process pushes the boundaries of performance, making Varnish Enterprise the fastest and most resource efficient solution on the market. This is much more throughput than many will currently need, but it means Varnish Enterprise owns the future in the web performance arms race.

Security

Varnish Enterprise is hardened and put through extensive testing for bugs and security flaws, with longer support periods and backported updates, suiting the long-term strategy required for enterprises to continue satisfying their users and remaining competitive. Varnish Enterprise users will also know about any vulnerabilities and associated security risks before the open-source community.

With support, SLAs and insurance, as well as benefiting from the stability of Varnish Enterprise releases, Varnish Enterprise users can be more resilient and up to date with latest security best practices.

These organizations may also have stricter security obligations, so benefit from the additional security features within Varnish Enterprise such as a web application firewall, full cache encryption, and front and backend TLS, plus support for various authentication methods. Varnish access controls, geo-fencing and IP blocking also control access to content in a flexible, customizable way.

For more information on the differences between Varnish Enterprise and Varnish Cache, download the full guide below: