# Varnish Competence Center Switzerland > Expert Varnish Cache consulting and performance optimization in Switzerland. Accelerate your web delivery with open-source HTTP caching solutions from VSHN. Your Varnish Competence Center Switzerland - VSHN provides expert consulting, architecture design, and performance optimization for Varnish Cache deployments. We help you accelerate web delivery, reduce origin load, and build resilient caching infrastructure. ## Pages - [Homepage](https://www.varnish.ch/): Varnish Cache – HTTP Acceleration Experts Switzerland | VSHN - [Partner with VSHN on Managed Varnish | VSHN](https://www.varnish.ch/partners.md) ## Features - **Varnish Consulting & Architecture**: VSHN architects design Varnish Cache deployments tailored to your traffic patterns and application requirements. We assess your current infrastructure, recommend optimal caching strategies, and deliver production-ready architecture documentation covering multi-tier caching, edge deployment, and high-availability configurations. - **Performance Optimization**: Our engineers analyze your existing Varnish setup to identify bottlenecks and missed caching opportunities. We tune cache hit ratios, optimize TTLs, configure grace mode for origin resilience, and implement ESI (Edge Side Includes) to maximize delivery speed while minimizing origin server load. - **Swiss Cloud Hosting**: Deploy Varnish on leading Swiss cloud providers including cloudscale.ch and Exoscale, both operating data centers exclusively in Switzerland, or on major international platforms such as AWS, Google Cloud, or Azure. Full data residency compliance for regulated industries. - **VCL Configuration & Tuning**: Varnish Configuration Language (VCL) is powerful but complex. Our engineers write, review, and optimize VCL rules for your specific use cases - from URL normalization and cookie handling to A/B testing, device detection, and custom cache invalidation workflows. - **Open Source Expertise**: Varnish Cache is a proven open-source HTTP accelerator trusted by some of the world's highest-traffic websites. VSHN's expertise covers the full open-source Varnish ecosystem including VMODs (Varnish Modules), logging infrastructure, and integration with CDN and load balancer layers. - **24/7 Support & Incident Response**: Our engineering team is available around the clock for Varnish-related incidents and operational questions. Critical issues are responded to within one hour under our SLA plans, with a dedicated incident commander assigned to each event to ensure rapid resolution. ## Included in VSHN Varnish Consulting Services - Varnish architecture consulting and design review - VCL development, review, and optimization - Performance audit and cache hit ratio analysis - Capacity planning and infrastructure sizing - Monitoring and observability setup (Prometheus, Grafana) - Migration assistance from other caching solutions - Ongoing operational advisory and best-practice guidance - Team training and VCL knowledge transfer ## Varnish Cache FAQ ### What is Varnish Cache and how does it work? Varnish Cache is an open-source HTTP accelerator and reverse proxy designed to sit in front of web servers and cache HTTP responses. When a request arrives, Varnish checks its in-memory cache and serves the response directly if available, bypassing the origin server entirely. This dramatically reduces latency and origin load, often delivering pages in under one millisecond. Varnish uses its own domain-specific language called VCL (Varnish Configuration Language) to give operators fine-grained control over caching rules, request routing, and content manipulation. It is trusted by some of the highest-traffic websites in the world, including major news outlets and streaming platforms. ### What Varnish consulting services does VSHN offer? VSHN provides end-to-end Varnish consulting covering architecture design, VCL development and review, performance optimization, capacity planning, monitoring setup, and team training. We assess your current web delivery infrastructure, recommend an optimal Varnish deployment strategy, and deliver production-ready configurations. Our engineers also provide ongoing advisory services for teams that want expert guidance on caching best practices, cache invalidation strategies, and integration with CDN layers. All consulting engagements include written documentation and knowledge transfer sessions. ### What SLA does VSHN offer for Varnish support? VSHN offers tiered support plans for Varnish environments. Our best-effort plan is suitable for development and staging environments. Our production support plans guarantee 99.99% response availability, with critical incidents responded to within one hour around the clock. All SLA commitments are documented in a written service agreement signed before any engagement begins. Support covers Varnish configuration issues, performance degradation, cache invalidation problems, and integration questions with your application stack. ### What infrastructure is needed for Varnish deployments? Varnish Cache runs efficiently on modern Linux servers and is optimized for in-memory caching, so fast storage is less critical than available RAM. For cloud deployments, VSHN recommends Swiss providers such as cloudscale.ch or Exoscale for data residency compliance, or international platforms like AWS, Google Cloud, or Microsoft Azure. A typical production Varnish instance requires 4 vCPU and 8 GB RAM minimum, with memory sized according to your working set. VSHN handles architecture sizing as part of every consulting engagement. ### How does VSHN handle backups and disaster recovery for Varnish? While Varnish Cache itself is an in-memory store that regenerates its cache from origin servers, VSHN ensures all Varnish configurations, VCL files, and deployment manifests are version-controlled and backed up. We maintain encrypted off-site backups of all configuration artifacts. Disaster recovery procedures are documented and tested regularly, ensuring a full Varnish environment can be rebuilt and operational within defined recovery time objectives. We also advise on cache warming strategies to minimize the performance impact of a cold cache after recovery. ### Can Varnish be deployed on Swiss cloud infrastructure? Yes. VSHN deploys and configures Varnish on Swiss cloud providers by default, including cloudscale.ch and Exoscale, both of which operate data centers exclusively in Switzerland. If data residency is a compliance requirement for your organization, these providers are the recommended choice. We also support AWS (Zurich region), Google Cloud, and Microsoft Azure where Swiss regions are available. Your data sovereignty requirements are documented in the service agreement, and no configuration data ever leaves your chosen region without explicit consent. ### Is Varnish Cache open source? Yes. Varnish Cache is fully open source, released under a BSD two-clause license. This means there are no license fees, no vendor lock-in, and no restrictions on commercial use. The open-source ecosystem includes a rich library of VMODs (Varnish Modules) that extend functionality for use cases like authentication, geolocation, throttling, and custom logging. Our consulting ensures you get enterprise-grade reliability from the open-source project without proprietary dependencies. ### Does VSHN support Varnish on Kubernetes? Yes. VSHN has proven experience running Varnish Cache on Kubernetes, including on APPUiO, our Swiss Kubernetes managed platform. We design Varnish deployments as Kubernetes-native workloads with proper health checks, horizontal pod autoscaling, and graceful shutdown handling. The same 99.99% SLA support and 24/7 engineering availability apply to Kubernetes-hosted Varnish environments. Configuration is managed via GitOps workflows, ensuring all VCL changes are version-controlled and auditable. ### How do I get started with VSHN Varnish consulting? Contact us using the form below. Tell us about your current web delivery architecture, traffic volume, the challenges you are facing - for example high origin load, slow page delivery, or cache invalidation complexity - and your preferred cloud provider such as cloudscale.ch, Exoscale, AWS, or Google Cloud. We provide a written requirements analysis and cost estimate within one business day. There is no commitment at the scoping stage. Once you decide to proceed, we schedule the consulting engagement to begin within one week of agreement. ### Can agencies engage VSHN for Varnish on client projects? Yes. Web agencies and development firms engage VSHN to deploy and operate Varnish caching infrastructure for their clients. VSHN handles Varnish architecture, VCL configuration, cache tuning, and 24/7 monitoring while your team focuses on application development. Each client runs on dedicated infrastructure with full isolation. This lets you offer high-performance caching to clients without maintaining Varnish expertise in-house. ## Contact us Ready to accelerate your web delivery with expert Varnish consulting? Contact us for a free requirements analysis. Consulting at CHF 250 per hour. Want to hear from a customer first? We can arrange a reference call. Booking: #contact --- ## Partner with VSHN on Managed Varnish | VSHN # Partner with VSHN on Managed Varnish You develop web applications and know which responses can be cached. VSHN operates Varnish in production with 24/7 support, SLA-backed custom application operations, and monitoring. You define VCL rules and cache behaviour, VSHN handles deployment, scaling, and incident response. Together you deliver fast web applications with production-grade caching infrastructure. ## How we collaborate **Lead Partner model.** For each project, one of us is the customer's single point of contact. Who leads depends on the project, agreed per engagement. The Lead Partner drives the project, handles invoicing, and owns first-level support. **Joint delivery.** You handle consulting, integration, and project management. VSHN handles infrastructure operations, monitoring, backups, and SLA. Or the other way around, depending on the project. Roles are agreed per engagement, not locked into a rigid structure. **Flexible billing.** Invoice the customer together or separately, agreed per project. Both models are supported: each party invoices their share directly, or one party invoices the full amount and redistributes. **Protected relationships.** No undercutting. Your customer stays your customer. Existing relationships are respected on both sides, with contractual protections for both parties. ## Division of labour for Managed Varnish | Your role | VSHN's role | |-----------|-------------| | Application development and cache-control headers | Varnish instance provisioning and operations | | VCL rules and cache behaviour definition | 24/7 custom application operations support | | Performance testing and cache validation | Monitoring, alerting, and incident response | | Origin architecture and integration | TLS termination and certificate management | | Project management and customer relationship | SLA with defined response times (up to 99.99%) | ## Become a partner Our partner network for Managed Varnish is growing. If you offer web performance consulting, CDN architecture, or caching strategy services, we'd like to hear from you. See all VSHN partners at [servala.com/partners](https://servala.com/partners/). ## Start a partnership Interested in delivering managed Varnish together? Let's explore how we complement each other. [Book a partnership discovery call](https://aarno.cal.vs.hn/15-varnish) or [start a partnership conversation](#contact).