Varnish 6.0 available in limited release

You will probably notice a lot of changes on the Varnish website, including but not limited to the way we present solutions. We’ve looked at how best to make our solutions available and how to present them and discovered several common challenges the market faces. We’ve used our technology to create solutions to tackle them: Varnish for API and Web Acceleration, Varnish Streaming Server and Varnish DIY CDN (content delivery network). Helping make these solution approaches possible is the introduction of features in the latest version of the commercial software, Varnish, 6.0, which includes new features for security, cloud deployments, cache invalidation and HTTP/2 support. For now, the release is under limited availability.

New capabilities in Varnish; more possibilities for content delivery

Varnish 6.0 introduces new capabilities for overcoming the dynamic challenges of content delivery. Website and app traffic across devices has exploded, leading to demands for faster, safer, less expensive content delivery - and the need for flexibility in deciding how, when, where and to whom to deliver it. The types of content, too, are changing the landscape, with video, images and streaming consuming growing amounts of bandwidth. At the same time, cache leaks like Cloudbleed as well as increasingly vicious security attacks continually pose a threat, while new regulations such as the GDPR place more responsibility on businesses to put tighter security in place at every level, especially within IT and its data handling.

Varnish 6.0 offers new features that include:

• Varnish Total Encryption - supporting PCI and GDPR compliance, Varnish Total Encryption 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 cache object. 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 content fast and seamlessly on all channels with easy API-based cache invalidation. Unlike the Super Fast Purger, 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 6.0 now fully supports HTTP/2.
  
  

Availability

Varnish 6.0 is currently under limited availability; during spring 2018, it will be made generally available. Get in touch to learn more about this new release.