[sandGorgon]

for b), we dont use AWS - we are hosted on Softlayer cloud. Does that mean that - if you use Varnish with SSL, then you NEED to use HaProxy ?

Or is it nginx (SSL termination) -> varnish -> nginx (server) -> Rails

[megaman821]

Yes, I usually set up Nginx just to listen to port 443 and forward to Varnish on the same machine. You could do the same with HaProxy.

It is not as bad it seems since using Nginx to terminate SSL and forward is just a really simple config file. If you have a lot of cached resources then the path is mostly Nginx -> Varnish. Varnish is probably over 100 times faster than Rails at serving anything cacheable.