agaric-coop/box/provisioning/roles/geerlingguy.varnish

Ansible Role: Varnish

Installs the Varnish HTTP Cache on RedHat/CentOS or Debian/Ubuntu Linux.

Requirements

Requires the EPEL repository on RedHat/CentOS (you can install it using the geerlingguy.repo-epel role).

Role Variables

Available variables are listed below, along with default values (see defaults/main.yml):

varnish_package_name: "varnish"

Varnish package name you want to install. See apt-cache policy varnish or yum list varnish for a listing of available candidates.

varnish_version: "5.1"

Varnish version that should be installed. See the Varnish Cache packagecloud.io repositories for a listing of available versions. Some examples include: 5.1, 5.0, 4.1, 4.0, 3.0, and 2.1.

varnish_config_path: /etc/varnish

The path in which Varnish configuration files will be stored.

varnish_use_default_vcl: true

Whether to use the included (simplistic) default Varnish VCL, using the backend host/port defined with the next two variables. Set this to false and copy your own default.vcl file into the varnish_config_path if you'd like to use a more complicated setup. If this variable is set to true, all other configuration will be taken from Varnish's own default VCL.

varnish_default_vcl_template_path: default.vcl.j2

The default VCL file to be copied (if varnish_use_default_vcl is true). Defaults the the simple template inside templates/default.vcl.j2. This path should be relative to the directory from which you run your playbook.

varnish_listen_port: "80"

The port on which Varnish will listen (typically port 80).

varnish_default_backend_host: "127.0.0.1"
varnish_default_backend_port: "8080"

Some settings for the default "default.vcl" template that will be copied to the varnish_config_path folder. The default backend host/port could be Apache or Nginx (or some other HTTP server) running on the same host or some other host (in which case, you might use port 80 instead).

varnish_limit_nofile: 131072

The nofiles PAM limit Varnish will attempt to set for open files. The normal default is ~1024 which is much too low for Varnish usage.

varnish_secret: "14bac2e6-1e34-4770-8078-974373b76c90"

The secret/key to be used for connecting to Varnish's admin backend (for purge requests, etc.).

varnish_admin_listen_host: "127.0.0.1"
varnish_admin_listen_port: "6082"

The host and port through which Varnish will accept admin requests (like purge and status requests).

varnish_storage: "file,/var/lib/varnish/varnish_storage.bin,256M"

How Varnish stores cache entries (this is passed in as the argument for -s). If you want to use in-memory storage, change to something like malloc,256M. Please read Varnish's Getting Started guide for more information.

varnish_pidfile: /run/varnishd.pid

Varnish PID file path. Set to an empty string if you don't want to use a PID file.

varnish_enabled_services:
  - varnish

Services that will be started at boot and should be running after this role is complete. You might need to add additional services if required, e.g. varnishncsa and varnishlog. If set to an empty array, no services will be enabled at startup.

varnish_backends:
  apache:
    host: 10.0.2.2
    port: 80
  nodejs:
    host: 10.0.2.3
    port: 80

varnish_vhosts:
  example.com:
    backend: apache
  nodejs.example.com:
    backend: nodejs

You can configure multiple backends (and direct traffic from multiple virtual hosts to different backends) using the varnish_backends and varnish_vhosts variables. If you only use one backend (defined via varnish_default_backend_host and varnish_default_backend_port), then you do not need to define these variables. Do not add a www to the vhosts keys; it is added automatically by the default.vcl.j2 VCL template.

Dependencies

None.

Example Playbook

- hosts: webservers
  vars_files:
    - vars/main.yml
  roles:
    - geerlingguy.varnish

Inside vars/main.yml:

varnish_secret: "[secret generated by uuidgen]"
varnish_default_backend_port: 81
... etc ...

License

MIT / BSD

Author Information

This role was created in 2014 by Jeff Geerling, author of Ansible for DevOps.