Varnish 6.x default.vcl for Wordpress 5.x

default.vcl

vcl 4.1;
# Based on: https://github.com/mattiasgeniar/varnish-6.0-configuration-templates/blob/master/default.vcl

import std;
import directors;

backend server1 { # Define one backend
  .host = "10.1.96.5";    # IP or Hostname of backend
  .port = "8080";           # Port Apache or whatever is listening
  .max_connections = 300; # That's it

  .probe = {
    #.url = "/"; # short easy way (GET /)
    # We prefer to only do a HEAD /
    .request =
      "HEAD / HTTP/1.1"
      "Host: localhost"      # BE SURE TO PUT YOUR HOSTNAME HERE
      "Connection: close"
      "User-Agent: Varnish Health Probe";

    .interval  = 5s; # check the health of each backend every 5 seconds
    .timeout   = 1s; # timing out after 1 second.
    .window    = 5;  # If 3 out of the last 5 polls succeeded the backend is considered healthy, otherwise it will be marked as sick
    .threshold = 3;
  }

  .first_byte_timeout     = 300s;   # How long to wait before we receive a first byte from our backend?
  .connect_timeout        = 5s;     # How long to wait for a backend connection?
  .between_bytes_timeout  = 2s;     # How long to wait between bytes received from our backend?
}

acl purge {
  # ACL we'll use later to allow purges
  "localhost";
  "127.0.0.1";
  "::1";
#  "1.2.3.4/24";   # You can put in a subnet of IPs as well
}

sub vcl_init {
  # Called when VCL is loaded, before any requests pass through it.
  # Typically used to initialize VMODs.

  new vdir = directors.round_robin();
  vdir.add_backend(server1);
  # vdir.add_backend(server...);
  # vdir.add_backend(servern);
}

sub vcl_recv {
  # Called at the beginning of a request, after the complete request has been received and parsed.
  # Its purpose is to decide whether or not to serve the request, how to do it, and, if applicable,
  # which backend to use.
  # also used to modify the request

  set req.backend_hint = vdir.backend(); # send all traffic to the vdir director

  # Normalize the header if it exists, remove the port (in case you're testing this on various TCP ports)
  if (req.http.Host) {
   set req.http.Host = regsub(req.http.Host, ":[0-9]+", "");
  }

  # Remove the proxy header (see https://httpoxy.org/#mitigate-varnish)
  unset req.http.proxy;

  # Normalize the query arguments
  set req.url = std.querysort(req.url);

  # Allow purging
  if (req.method == "PURGE") {
    if (!client.ip ~ purge) { # purge is the ACL defined at the begining
      # Not from an allowed IP? Then die with an error.
      return (synth(405, "This IP is not allowed to send PURGE requests."));
    }
    # If you got this stage (and didn't error out above), purge the cached result
    return (purge);
  }

  # Allow banning regexes
	if (req.method == "BAN") {
		if (!client.ip ~ purge) {
			return (synth(405, "This IP is not allowed to send BAN requests."));
		}
		ban("req.http.host == " + req.http.host + " && req.url ~ ^" + req.url);

		# Throw a synthetic page so the request won't go to the backend.
		return (synth(200, "Ban added"));
	}

  # Only deal with "normal" types
  if (req.method != "GET" &&
      req.method != "HEAD" &&
      req.method != "PUT" &&
      req.method != "POST" &&
      req.method != "TRACE" &&
      req.method != "OPTIONS" &&
      req.method != "PATCH" &&
      req.method != "DELETE") {
    /* Non-RFC2616 or CONNECT which is weird. */
    return (pipe);
  }

  # Implementing websocket support (https://www.varnish-cache.org/docs/4.0/users-guide/vcl-example-websockets.html)
  if (req.http.Upgrade ~ "(?i)websocket") {
    return (pipe);
  }

  # Only cache GET or HEAD requests. This makes sure the POST requests are always passed.
  if (req.method != "GET" && req.method != "HEAD") {
    return (pass);
  }

  # Don't cache ajax requests
	if (req.http.X-Requested-With == "XMLHttpRequest") {
		return(pass);
	}

  # Not cacheable by default
	if (req.http.Authorization) {
		return (pass);
	}

	# Wordpress: don't cache users who are logged-in or on password-protected pages
	if (req.http.Cookie ~ "wordpress_logged_in_|resetpass|wp-postpass_") {
		return(pass);
	}

  # Wordpress: don't cache these special Wordpress pages
	if (req.url ~ "/feed(/)?|wp-admin|wp-(comments-post|cron|login|activate|mail)\.php|register\.php") {
		return (pass);
	}

	# Wordpress: don't cache search results
	if (req.url ~ "/\?s=") {
		return (pass);
	}

  # Wordpress: don't cache REST API (hand-rolled APIs used by custom themes)
	if (req.url ~ "/shared-gc/includes/rest-api/") {
		return (pass);
	}

	# Wordpress: don't cache anything with a cache-breaking v=<random> parameter (see gc.loadCachedJSON() JS function)
	if (req.url ~ "(\?|&)v=0") {
		return (pass);
	}

  # Wordpress: Don't cache the special pages we use to generate PDFs from the Wordpress catalog site
	if (req.url ~ "/generate-catalog/") {
		return (pass);
	}

  ## CACHING LARGE STATIC FILES ##

  # If you are running Varnish on a small server, do not stream static files from Varnish.  I am currently making a test site as I
  # write this, and my Varnish VPS only has 1GB of memory (luckily nothing else runs on it).  As such, I want any large file streaming
  # to come from Nginx rather than be cached by Varnish.  Uncomment the second block beneath it and comment out the first one if you
  # want Varnish to cache and stream large static files.  Uncomment the third one if you *really* want to cache a lot of files.

	# Don't cache any large files (zip, audio, video, etc.)
	# Varnish does support streaming, but nginx will do it just as well
	if (req.url ~ "^[^?]*\.(7z|avi|bz2|flac|flv|gz|mka|mkv|mov|mp3|mp4|mpeg|mpg|ogg|ogm|opus|rar|tar|tgz|tbz|txz|wav|webm|wmv|xz|zip)(\?.*)?$") {
		return (pipe);
	}
  # We do want to cache some files though! Generally, some of these should be on the smaller side.
  if (req.url ~ "^[^?]*\.(css|csv|doc|docx|eot|gif||ico|jpeg|jpg||js|less|pdf|ppt|pptx|rtf|svg|svgz|swf|tiff|ttf|txt|xls|xlsx|xml)?$") {
    return (hash);
  }

  # Large static files are delivered directly to the end-user without
  # waiting for Varnish to fully read the file first.
  # Varnish 4 fully supports Streaming, so set do_stream in vcl_backend_response()
#  if (req.url ~ "^[^?]*\.(7z|avi|bz2|flac|flv|gz|mka|mkv|mov|mp3|mp4|mpeg|mpg|ogg|ogm|opus|rar|tar|tgz|tbz|txz|wav|webm|xz|zip)(\?.*)?$") {
#    unset req.http.Cookie;
#    return (hash);
#  }

  # Remove all cookies for all static files
  # A valid discussion could be held on this line: do you really need to cache static files that don't cause load? Only if you have memory left.
  # Sure, there's disk I/O, but chances are your OS will already have these files in their buffers (thus memory).
  # Before you blindly enable this, have a read here: https://ma.ttias.be/stop-caching-static-files/
#  if (req.url ~ "^[^?]*\.(7z|avi|bmp|bz2|css|csv|doc|docx|eot|flac|flv|gif|gz|ico|jpeg|jpg|js|less|mka|mkv|mov|mp3|mp4|mpeg|mpg|odt|otf|ogg|ogm|opus|pdf|png|ppt|pptx|rar|rtf|svg|svgz|swf|tar|tbz|tgz|ttf|txt|txz|wav|webm|webp|woff|woff2|xls|xlsx|xml|xz|zip)(\?.*)?$") {
#    unset req.http.Cookie;
#    return (hash);
#  }

  # Some generic URL manipulation, useful for all templates that follow
  # First remove the Google Analytics added parameters, useless for our backend
  if (req.url ~ "(\?|&)(utm_source|utm_medium|utm_campaign|utm_content|gclid|cx|ie|cof|siteurl)=") {
    set req.url = regsuball(req.url, "&(utm_source|utm_medium|utm_campaign|utm_content|gclid|cx|ie|cof|siteurl)=([A-z0-9_\-\.%25]+)", "");
    set req.url = regsuball(req.url, "\?(utm_source|utm_medium|utm_campaign|utm_content|gclid|cx|ie|cof|siteurl)=([A-z0-9_\-\.%25]+)", "?");
    set req.url = regsub(req.url, "\?&", "?");
    set req.url = regsub(req.url, "\?$", "");
  }

  # Strip hash, server doesn't need it.
  if (req.url ~ "\#") {
    set req.url = regsub(req.url, "\#.*$", "");
  }

  # Strip a trailing ? if it exists
  if (req.url ~ "\?$") {
    set req.url = regsub(req.url, "\?$", "");
  }

  # Some generic cookie manipulation, useful for all templates that follow
  # Remove the "has_js" cookie
  set req.http.Cookie = regsuball(req.http.Cookie, "has_js=[^;]+(; )?", "");

  # Remove any Google Analytics based cookies
  set req.http.Cookie = regsuball(req.http.Cookie, "__utm.=[^;]+(; )?", "");
  set req.http.Cookie = regsuball(req.http.Cookie, "_ga=[^;]+(; )?", "");
  set req.http.Cookie = regsuball(req.http.Cookie, "_gat=[^;]+(; )?", "");
  set req.http.Cookie = regsuball(req.http.Cookie, "utmctr=[^;]+(; )?", "");
  set req.http.Cookie = regsuball(req.http.Cookie, "utmcmd.=[^;]+(; )?", "");
  set req.http.Cookie = regsuball(req.http.Cookie, "utmccn.=[^;]+(; )?", "");

  # Remove DoubleClick offensive cookies
  set req.http.Cookie = regsuball(req.http.Cookie, "__gads=[^;]+(; )?", "");

  # Remove the Quant Capital cookies (added by some plugin, all __qca)
  set req.http.Cookie = regsuball(req.http.Cookie, "__qc.=[^;]+(; )?", "");

  # Remove the AddThis cookies
  set req.http.Cookie = regsuball(req.http.Cookie, "__atuv.=[^;]+(; )?", "");

  # Remove a ";" prefix in the cookie if present
  set req.http.Cookie = regsuball(req.http.Cookie, "^;\s*", "");

  # Are there cookies left with only spaces or that are empty?
  if (req.http.cookie ~ "^\s*$") {
    unset req.http.cookie;
  }

  if (req.http.Cache-Control ~ "(?i)no-cache") {
    if (client.ip ~ purge) {
      # Ignore requests via proxy caches and badly behaved crawlers
      # like msnbot that send no-cache with every request.
      if (! (req.http.Via || req.http.User-Agent ~ "(?i)bot" || req.http.X-Purge)) {
        set req.hash_always_miss = true; # Doesn't seems to refresh the object in the cache
        return(purge); # Couple this with restart in vcl_purge and X-Purge header to avoid loops
      }
    }
  }

  # Send Surrogate-Capability headers to announce ESI support to backend
  set req.http.Surrogate-Capability = "key=ESI/1.0";

  return (hash);
}

sub vcl_pipe {
  # Called upon entering pipe mode.
  # In this mode, the request is passed on to the backend, and any further data from both the client
  # and backend is passed on unaltered until either end closes the connection. Basically, Varnish will
  # degrade into a simple TCP proxy, shuffling bytes back and forth. For a connection in pipe mode,
  # no other VCL subroutine will ever get called after vcl_pipe.

  # Note that only the first request to the backend will have
  # X-Forwarded-For set.  If you use X-Forwarded-For and want to
  # have it set for all requests, make sure to have:
  # set bereq.http.connection = "close";
  # here.  It is not set by default as it might break some broken web
  # applications, like IIS with NTLM authentication.

  # set bereq.http.Connection = "Close";

  # Implementing websocket support (https://www.varnish-cache.org/docs/4.0/users-guide/vcl-example-websockets.html)
  if (req.http.upgrade) {
    set bereq.http.upgrade = req.http.upgrade;
  }

  return (pipe);
}

sub vcl_pass {
  # Called upon entering pass mode. In this mode, the request is passed on to the backend, and the
  # backend's response is passed on to the client, but is not entered into the cache. Subsequent
  # requests submitted over the same client connection are handled normally.

  return (fetch);
}

# The data on which the hashing will take place
sub vcl_hash {
  # Called after vcl_recv to create a hash value for the request. This is used as a key
  # to look up the object in Varnish.

  hash_data(req.url);

  if (req.http.host) {
    hash_data(req.http.host);
  } else {
    hash_data(server.ip);
  }

  # hash cookies for requests that have them
  if (req.http.Cookie) {
    hash_data(req.http.Cookie);
  }

  # Cache the HTTP vs HTTPs separately
  if (req.http.X-Forwarded-Proto) {
    hash_data(req.http.X-Forwarded-Proto);
  }

  return (lookup);
}

sub vcl_hit {
  # Called when a cache lookup is successful.

  if (obj.ttl >= 0s) {
    # A pure unadultered hit, deliver it
    return (deliver);
  }

  # https://www.varnish-cache.org/docs/trunk/users-guide/vcl-grace.html
  # When several clients are requesting the same page Varnish will send one request to the backend and place the others
  # on hold while fetching one copy from the backend. In some products this is called request coalescing and Varnish does
  # this automatically.
  # If you are serving thousands of hits per second the queue of waiting requests can get huge. There are two potential
  # problems - one is a thundering herd problem - suddenly releasing a thousand threads to serve content might send the
  # load sky high. Secondly - nobody likes to wait. To deal with this we can instruct Varnish to keep the objects in cache
  # beyond their TTL and to serve the waiting requests somewhat stale content.

  # I am not going to be serving up that many hits at the moment, so I am going to leave this commented out.
# if (!std.healthy(req.backend_hint) && (obj.ttl + obj.grace > 0s)) {
#   return (deliver);
# } else {
#   return (miss);
# }

  # We have no fresh fish. Lets look at the stale ones.
  if (std.healthy(req.backend_hint)) {
    # Backend is healthy. Limit age to 10s.
    if (obj.ttl + 10s > 0s) {
      #set req.http.grace = "normal(limited)";
      return (deliver);
    } else {
      # No candidate for grace. Fetch a fresh object.
      return(miss);
    }
  } else {
    # backend is sick - use full grace
      if (obj.ttl + obj.grace > 0s) {
      #set req.http.grace = "full";
      return (deliver);
    } else {
      # no graced object.
      return (miss);
    }
  }

  # fetch & deliver once we get the result
  return (miss); # Dead code, keep as a safeguard
}

sub vcl_miss {
  # Called after a cache lookup if the requested document was not found in the cache. Its purpose
  # is to decide whether or not to attempt to retrieve the document from the backend, and which
  # backend to use.

  return (fetch);
}

# Handle the HTTP request coming from our backend
sub vcl_backend_response {
  # Called after the response headers has been successfully retrieved from the backend.

  # Pause ESI request and remove Surrogate-Control header
  if (beresp.http.Surrogate-Control ~ "ESI/1.0") {
    unset beresp.http.Surrogate-Control;
    set beresp.do_esi = true;
  }

  # Enable cache for all static files
  # The same argument as the static caches from above: monitor your cache size, if you get data nuked out of it, consider giving up the static file cache.
  # Before you blindly enable this, have a read here: https://ma.ttias.be/stop-caching-static-files/
#  if (bereq.url ~ "^[^?]*\.(7z|avi|bmp|bz2|css|csv|doc|docx|eot|flac|flv|gif|gz|ico|jpeg|jpg|js|less|mka|mkv|mov|mp3|mp4|mpeg|mpg|odt|otf|ogg|ogm|opus|pdf|png|ppt|pptx|rar|rtf|svg|svgz|swf|tar|tbz|tgz|ttf|txt|txz|wav|webm|webp|woff|woff2|xls|xlsx|xml|xz|zip)(\?.*)?$") {
#    unset beresp.http.set-cookie;
#  }

  # Large static files are delivered directly to the end-user without
  # waiting for Varnish to fully read the file first.
  # Varnish 4 fully supports Streaming, so use streaming here to avoid locking.
#  if (bereq.url ~ "^[^?]*\.(7z|avi|bz2|flac|flv|gz|mka|mkv|mov|mp3|mp4|mpeg|mpg|ogg|ogm|opus|rar|tar|tgz|tbz|txz|wav|webm|xz|zip)(\?.*)?$") {
#    unset beresp.http.set-cookie;
#    set beresp.do_stream = true;  # Check memory usage it'll grow in fetch_chunksize blocks (128k by default) if the backend doesn't send a Content-Length header, so only enable it for big objects
#  }

  # Sometimes, a 301 or 302 redirect formed via Apache's mod_rewrite can mess with the HTTP port that is being passed along.
  # This often happens with simple rewrite rules in a scenario where Varnish runs on :80 and Apache on :8080 on the same box.
  # A redirect can then often redirect the end-user to a URL on :8080, where it should be :80.
  # This may need finetuning on your setup.
  #
  # To prevent accidental replace, we only filter the 301/302 redirects for now.

  # I am not using Apache, so I am commenting this out
#  if (beresp.status == 301 || beresp.status == 302) {
#    set beresp.http.Location = regsub(beresp.http.Location, ":[0-9]+", "");
#  }

  # Set 2min cache if unset for static files
  if (beresp.ttl <= 0s || beresp.http.Set-Cookie || beresp.http.Vary == "*") {
    set beresp.ttl = 120s; # Important, you shouldn't rely on this, SET YOUR HEADERS in the backend
    set beresp.uncacheable = true;
    return (deliver);
  }

  # Don't cache 50x responses
  if (beresp.status == 500 || beresp.status == 502 || beresp.status == 503 || beresp.status == 504) {
    return (abandon);
  }

  # Allow stale content, in case the backend goes down.
  # make Varnish keep all objects for 6 hours beyond their TTL
  set beresp.grace = 6h;

  return (deliver);
}

# The routine when we deliver the HTTP request to the user
# Last chance to modify headers that are sent to the client
sub vcl_deliver {
  # Called before a cached object is delivered to the client.

  if (obj.hits > 0) { # Add debug header to see if it's a HIT/MISS and the number of hits, disable when not needed
    set resp.http.X-Cache = "HIT";
  } else {
    set resp.http.X-Cache = "MISS";
  }

  # Please note that obj.hits behaviour changed in 4.0, now it counts per objecthead, not per object
  # and obj.hits may not be reset in some cases where bans are in use. See bug 1492 for details.
  # So take hits with a grain of salt
  set resp.http.X-Cache-Hits = obj.hits;

  # Remove some headers: PHP version
  unset resp.http.X-Powered-By;

  # Remove some headers: Apache version & OS
  unset resp.http.Server;
  unset resp.http.X-Drupal-Cache;
  unset resp.http.X-Varnish;
  unset resp.http.Via;
  unset resp.http.Link;
  unset resp.http.X-Generator;

  return (deliver);
}

sub vcl_purge {
  # Only handle actual PURGE HTTP methods, everything else is discarded
  if (req.method != "PURGE") {
    # restart request
    set req.http.X-Purge = "Yes";
    return(restart);
  }
}

sub vcl_synth {
  if (resp.status == 720) {
    # We use this special error status 720 to force redirects with 301 (permanent) redirects
    # To use this, call the following from anywhere in vcl_recv: return (synth(720, "http://host/new.html"));
    set resp.http.Location = resp.reason;
    set resp.status = 301;
    return (deliver);
  } elseif (resp.status == 721) {
    # And we use error status 721 to force redirects with a 302 (temporary) redirect
    # To use this, call the following from anywhere in vcl_recv: return (synth(720, "http://host/new.html"));
    set resp.http.Location = resp.reason;
    set resp.status = 302;
    return (deliver);
  }

  return (deliver);
}


sub vcl_fini {
  # Called when VCL is discarded only after all requests have exited the VCL.
  # Typically used to clean up VMODs.

  return (ok);
}