Recommended Pattern for Multi Server Deployment

[AaronKalair]

Support Request

Hi,

We are looking to use Blitz with our Craft installation to cache pages using the "Server Rewrites" feature to serve pre generated static pages from Nginx. We wish to use this server rewrites version of Blitz instead of just Blitz caching with centralised Redis storage, as the server rewrites feature will give us the improved performance which we need.

However we have multiple servers running Craft behind a Load Balancer and are unsure on the best ways to invalidate the caches across all of these nodes when content changes. I found this issue from 2021 which raises a similar question, but was wondering if anything has changed in regards to these multi server deployments in the last few years.

From reading the documentation it looks like our options are:

1. Run the Cache Purge commands via a CronJob on every server, and accept that there will be a delay between content being updated and caches refreshed on every node
2. Write our own Reverse Proxy Purger that $SOMEHOW issues a Cache Purge command on each server
3. Place a centralised Nginx infront of our Craft Servers, and use the "Remote Deployer" to ship the cached files to this centralised Nginx Server

Have we missed anything or are these are options for moving forward with Bliz?

Thanks for your help!

Plugin Version

No response

[bencroker]

Nothing has changed since #337, as far as I’m aware.

Server rewrites are really only feasible in a single server setup. Using a load balancer generally means spinning servers up and down as needed, which makes managing a distributed file based cache that much more complex. If you must use files, you should probably explore using a distributed file system like NFS.

My recommendation is still to use a centralised Redis instance that all servers connect to. If the issue is speed, consider using a reverse proxy such as Cloudflare, which caches pages on edge nodes.