High performance and scalability are complex topics--even for experts: we can't change that. But we can take a holistic look at our websites and our systems to gain a better understanding of the high-level choices and trade-offs we are making.

In this session, we will discuss and classify various caching/high performance methods (in example; Memcached, APC, Boost) to contextualize and better understand what Varnish is and how it differs from the other usual high performance suspects. Then we will take a deeper look at some of the benefits of Varnish as well as its limitations and constraints. We will close by looking at some types of sites where Varnish makes sense as well as some types of sites where it doesn't.

So that by the end of this session, you should be able to answer:
• How does Varnish differ from say Nginx/Lighttpd/APC/Memcached/NoSQL for the folks who allocate the budget?
• What are the pros and cons of Varnish?
• What is the level of effort involved with getting a site up on Varnish?
• And ultimately, should my company use Varnish?

The audience should know what LAMP means, but need not have sysadmin/devops experience.