ApacheCon North America 2017

The Apache web server is amazing at serving content, both static and proxied. As load increases, we immediately look at external caching or scaling out to add capacity. Adding a caching layer or quickly spinning up additional VMs/instances is quick and painless in the "DevOps" world in which we live; however, we must recognize that neither option is free.

In most cases, though, httpd has a lot more capacity to give with no hardware scaling at all. With strategic use of mod_cache and a few configuration changes, it is not unusual to see httpd's throughput increase 100-1000 times or even more, depending on the app!

We will investigate simple ways to implement mod_cache in your existing setup to increase your application's throughput without code changes, scaling up, or scaling out. Think of it as "scaling to"; that is, using your existing web servers' capabilities to their fullest.