> Even if we had a faster backend, I don't see why we'd avoid something as simple and useful as Varnish Agreed! Since as you show in your post, it's quite eff

> Even if we had a faster backend, I don't see why we'd avoid something as simple and useful as Varnish Agreed! Since as you show in your post, it's quite effortless to set up, it's often a great idea to have a reverse proxy cache to deal with whatever cacheable responses your application generates (be it many or just a few request types). I just want readers to be aware that for systems with a much more modest usage load (say ~1k RPS), a high-performance system can enjoy a slightly less complex system architecture. Ultimately, it's a decision for the application's designer to make. As you point out, there are other non-performance upsides to a reverse proxy. I love the ability to blip (technical term?) the application server and know the reverse proxy keeps a portion of users unaware. :)