Thinking of running new and legacy systems simultaneously? Don’t miss this DrupalCon Lille session

Alan Burke, Annertech’s director of technology, is always trying to boost the performance of websites. And now he’s using a tool that’s usually used for performance to keep two platforms going simultaneously.

For many website projects, the scariest thing is the “big switch" – turning off the old platform and turning on the new one. But there is another way: keep both new and legacy systems running, and use a tool like Varnish to “split" the traffic between the two systems, only going “live” with sections as and when they are ready.

There are numerous reasons for taking this approach.

• It’s especially good for large and complex websites that have a lot of content.
• It avoids a big bang approach to launching the new site.
• It also allows more time for migration and/or rewriting of content – which almost always takes longer than anticipated.

This two-platform approach is the subject of his presentation at DrupalCon Lille – the annual Drupal conference, which will take place this year in France between 17 and 20 October.

What is Varnish?

Its actual name is Varnish Cache, which gives you an idea of what it does – cache referring to a usually temporary data storage system.

Varnish Cache is a web application accelerator. It stores (or caches) data in memory, which enables it to reduce the response time and network bandwidth consumption on future, equivalent requests.

The presentation Alan’s presentation is titled “Having your cake, and eating it too: Using Varnish to serve content from your new Drupal site alongside your Legacy platform – keeping two platforms live at the same time.”

It’s a mouthful, but it tells attendees exactly what he’s going to cover.

In the session, Alan will talk about how the Annertech team managed this exact problem with www.ul.ie and will take the attendees into a deep dive as to how we did it.

Topics to be covered include:

• Running your own Varnish instance vs using a third-party provider such as Fastly.
• What is achievable “out of the box” using Fastly Using VCL snippets to achieve more flexibility.
• Going all the way with a custom VCL configuration – the risks and rewards.
• Tricks to make sure Drupal works well in such a configuration.

Alan's presentation is scheduled for Tuesday, 17 October from 4.15pm to 5pm in Room 5 (3.2 A & B).