VARNISH ENTERPRISE
The programmable delivery layer for high-demand workloads
Accelerate everything from live video streams and dynamic web applications to CI/CD artifact repositories. Varnish Enterprise gives you the speed, control, and efficiency to scale cleanly across multiple delivery tiers, without modifying your backend code.
Delivery demands are breaking traditional infrastructure
Whether broadcasting a live event, surviving an e-commerce flash sale, or scaling an internal developer platform, teams face backend overload, unpredictable latency, and skyrocketing egress costs. Traditional proxies and opaque commercial CDNs lack the flexibility to fix these issues without forcing costly architectural compromises.
Backend overload & buffering
Live video spikes, dynamic web requests, and database-heavy APIs easily buckle under thundering herds, causing sluggish page loads, timeouts, and stream buffering.
Fragmented edge stacks
Bolting separate WAFs, paywall authenticators, and routing sidecars onto your proxy creates unnecessary network hops and compounding latency at every node.
Opaque CDNs
Commercial CDNs charge exorbitant egress fees, act as black boxes during incidents, and offer limited guarantees around regional data sovereignty.
Why Varnish Enterprise
Fix delivery at the infrastructure layer, not in your app code
Varnish Enterprise is a programmable delivery layer. By executing caching, security, and routing natively through Varnish Configuration Language (VCL), you can fix architectural bottlenecks instantly.
The old way: Rigid infrastructure |
|
|---|---|
| 01 | Client requests payload |
| 02 | Passes to Auth/Geo sidecars |
| 03 | Hits origin for dynamic routing |
| 04 | Slow web/video delivery |
| Outcome: Origin bears the compute load; node architecture is complex and expensive. | |
Eliminate sidecar sprawl and consolidate functions at the node level to achieve massive density - delivering up to 1.5 Tbps+ per server.
The Varnish way: Programmable delivery |
|
|---|---|
| 01 | Request arrives at Edge |
| 02 | VCL natively enforces Auth/Geo |
| 03 | Cache Hit (or checks Shield tier) |
| 04 | Instant delivery |
| Outcome: Microsecond execution per node, enabling a highly efficient, multi-tier CDN or API gateway. | |
"Varnish Enterprise gives us the raw throughput to handle massive demand, combined with the persistence of a multi-terabyte disk engine. We can validate API tokens, assemble dynamic web pages at the edge, and enforce routing rules directly in VCL without ever touching our backend logic."
Platform & Infrastructure Team (High-Traffic Web & Media Delivery)
Capabilities
Four functions consolidated into one layer
Varnish Enterprise combines the proven open-source core with production-grade storage, 45+ built-in VMODs, and high-visibility observability tools.
01
Content & video delivery |
The Massive Storage Engine (MSE) supports multi-terabyte datasets across hybrid memory and disk. Serve long-tail VOD instantly, cache HLS/DASH byte-ranges, and accelerate REST/GraphQL APIs. |
02
Security & traffic filtering |
Enforce security at the first point of contact. Deploy an In-Process WAF, integrate Datadome bot mitigation, and enforce full TLS/mTLS without sacrificing throughput. |
03
Access control & edge logic |
Assemble personalized web pages dynamically (vmod-edgestash), authenticate requests at the edge using API tokens (vmod-jwt), and enforce geographic routing (vmod-mmdb). |
02
Security & traffic filtering |
Enforce security at the first point of contact. Deploy an In-Process WAF, integrate Datadome bot mitigation, and enforce full TLS/mTLS without sacrificing throughput. |
04
Real-time observability |
Gain full transparency with structured Line-Delimited JSON (LDJSON) logging via varnishncsa, granular Varnishstat metrics, or export full traces via the OpenTelemetry add-on. |
Where Varnish accelerates
API & dynamic web apps
Improve page load times and absorb peak traffic during flash sales by offloading authentication, header manipulation, and dynamic content assembly from your backend.
Live streaming & VOD delivery
Shield video origins and smooth out massive concurrent viewer spikes using stale-if-error resilience and highly efficient byte-range caching (vmod-slicer) for HLS/DASH.
Platform engineering & CI/CD
Cache and route software artifacts to dramatically speed up build times, reduce developer friction, and offload internal artifact repositories.
Sovereign private CDNs
Deliver massive media and web payloads without commercial CDN egress fees. Run your own multi-tier delivery stack to enforce strict data residency and network control.
Object storage acceleration
Deploy seamlessly in front of any S3-compatible backend (vmod-s3) and append AWS SigV4 natively to keep media buckets and web assets strictly private.
Multi-tenant traffic accounting
Meter bandwidth and API cache hits granularly for different internal teams, broadcasters, or external SaaS customers sharing the same delivery infrastructure (vmod-accounting).
Delivery-as-Code
Programmable traffic logic with VCL
Varnish Enterprise is programmable at every stage of the HTTP lifecycle. Fine-tune web APIs, enforce video paywalls dynamically, and implement custom load balancing, all compiled to fast C code.
sub vcl_recv {
# 1. Normalize query strings to improve API/Web cache hit rates
urlplus.filter_except("id,category,page");
req.url = urlplus.get();
# 2. Authenticate API and subscriber tokens at the edge
if (!jwt.verify(req.http.Authorization)) {
return (synth(401, "Unauthorized"));
}
# 3. Route to region-specific origins based on IP
set req.backend_hint = udo_director.backend(mmdb.lookup_country_code(client.ip));
}Key Operational Pillars:
- Dynamic routing:
Route around failing packaging origins or conduct A/B testing for web apps directly in the delivery layer. - Unmatched performance:
Optimized for speed, concurrency, and scale, ensuring rapid delivery under extreme live-event or flash-sale loads.
Built for web architects, broadcasters, and platform teams
Different teams face different challenges, but the requirement is the same: absolute control and flawless performance at scale. See how Varnish adapts to your architecture to slash latency, secure traffic, and optimize your edge.
SaaS, e-commerce & web architects
Ensure sub-millisecond page loads, absorb traffic spikes during flash sales, and offload API authentication from your backend database.
Media, broadcasters & CDN operators
Deliver flawless 4K streaming, enforce geographic rights natively, and deploy custom edge routing at regional PoPs while slashing commercial CDN egress costs.
Platform & DevOps teams
Offload internal API and artifact traffic, reduce CI/CD instability, and unify delivery across internal services without rewriting applications.
Advanced features for demanding workloads
- Dynamic Assembly & Compression: Cache personalized web pages using Edgestash (Mustache templates evaluated at the edge) and automatically compress payloads using vmod-brotli to save bandwidth and speed up API delivery.
- Video & Range Caching: vmod-slicer enables highly efficient caching of partial responses by splitting large video objects (HLS/DASH) into chunks fetched via HTTP Range requests, optimizing cache utilization and backend I/O.
- Terabyte-Scale Storage (MSE): The Massive Storage Engine (MSE) easily handles caches exceeding RAM limits, ideal for massive VOD libraries and artifact repos. It features payload checksumming, NUMA-awareness, and a self-regulating Memory Governor.
- In-Process TLS & Cryptography: Terminate TLS in-process with live, transactional certificate management. Secure cached content at rest using Total Encryption (vmod-crypto) with keys derived uniquely per request.
Specifications
Deployment & capabilities
Capability |
Availability |
| Massive Storage Engine (MSE 3 & 4) | Included |
| In-process TLS termination & HTTP/2 | Included |
| Video range caching & Edgestash assembly | Included |
| 45+ built-in edge logic VMODs | Included |
| Structured JSON logging & varnishstat | Included |
| In-process WAF | Add-on |
| Distributed rate limiting (vmod-ratelimit) | Add-on |
| OpenTelemetry export (varnish-otel) | Add-on |
| Kubernetes-native (Helm/Docker) | Supported |
| Varnish Controller UI | Available |
Get started
Evaluate Varnish Enterprise
Trusted by Fortune 500 media companies, global e-commerce brands, and massive enterprises. Varnish Enterprise is deployed at scale with expert support options including standard, 24/7, and fully managed service plans.
Dig Deeper
Documentation
Documentation references for Varnish Cache and Varnish Enterprise
Varnish Helm Chart
Varnish provides Helm Charts for Varnish Enterprise, Varnish Controller, and Varnish Controller Router, including their dependencies and integrations.
Varnish Gateway (Kubernetes Ingress)
A full Gateway API implementation backed by Varnish. Standards-compliant routing with Varnish's legendary performance.
Varnish Controller
Varnish Controller gives engineering teams a safe, scalable, and automated way to operate distributed caching infrastructure.
Accelerate everything. Modify nothing.
Use Varnish Enterprise to consolidate your delivery stack, deliver flawless video, accelerate dynamic web apps, and speed up your CI/CD pipelines, all without changing your backend application code.
