status/usage of FRiCKLE/ngx_cache_purge. still reliable? alternatives?

[PGNet Dev]

Hi

On 6/12/18 12:03 AM, Andrei wrote:
> - The sheer amount of added context switches (proxying was done local on 
> a cPanel box, seeing 20-30k reqs/sec during peak hours)

Not clear what you mean here

> - Having to manage two software versions, configs, auto config builders 
> used by internal tools, etc

Not a huge headache here.  I can see this gets possibly annoying a scale 
with # of sites.

> - More added headaches with central logging

Having Varnish's detailed logging is a bit plus, IME, for tracking down 
cache issues, specifically, and header issues in general.

No issues with 'central' logging.

> - No projected TLS support in Varnish

Having a terminator out front hasn't been a problem, save for the 
additional config considerations.

> - Bare minimum H2 support in Varnish vs a more mature implementation in 
> Nginx

This one I'm somewhat aware of -- haven't yet convinced myself of 
if/where there's a really problematic bottleneck.

> Since Nginx can pretty much do everything Varnish does, and more,

Except for the richness of the VCL ...

> I decided to avoid the headaches and just jump over to Nginx (even though 
> I've been an avid Varnish fan since 2.1.5). As for a VCL replacement and 
> purging in Nginx, I suggest reading up on Lua and checking out openresty 
> if you want streamlined updates and don't want to manually 
> compile/manage modules. To avoid overloading the filesystem with added 
> I/O from purge requests/scans/etc, I wrote a simple Perl script that 
> handles all the PURGE requests in order to have regex support and 
> control over the remoals (it basically validates ownership to purge on 
> the related domain, queues removals, then has another thread for the 
> cleanup).

My main problem so far is that WordPress appears to be generally 
Varnish-UNfriendly.

Not core, but plugins.  With Varnish, I'm having all SORTS of 
issues/artifacts cropping up.  So far, (my) VCL pass exceptions haven't 
been sufficient.

Without Varnish, there are far fewer 'surprises'.

Then again, I'm not a huge WP fan to begin with; it's a pain to debug 
anything beyond standard server config issues.  Caching in particular.

OTOH, my sites with Nginx+Varnish+Varnish with Symfony work without a hitch.

My leaning is, for WP, Nginx only.  For SF, Nginx+Varnish.  And, TBH, 
avoiding WP if/when I can.

> Hope this helps some :)

It does, thx!