Is it possible to run multiple Magento 2 websites on dedicated shared server with Varnish?

[luke_hovey]

Hello everyone,

My name is Luke and I am a web developer in Australia that has created over 20 Magento 2 websites for my customers.

These websites are for separate businesses and run on their own Magento instance.  Some have multi stores whilst others are just single stores.

I currently have my own dedicated server which is setup and maintained by a tech friend of mine here in Australia.

The issue that I have is that my sites are slow.  For example visit https://urbanproducts.com.au

I believe the main reason is because we don’t use Varnish cache.

I am told that Varnish can’t on a server that runs multiple Magento websites.

We currently run our own dedicated server running WHM, cPanel and Nginx (I think – sorry if I don’t supply all the technical details as it’s a bit over my head).

The server has 2 x E5-2690 V3 @2.6GHz processors with 128GB memory and is operating in a premier data centre in Australia.  It is well equipped.

My tech friend has suggested I reach out to Magento community and request any suggestions on what I should do to run these websites.

We have considered a separate VPS for each site, but the costs may be too expensive running 20 VPS's as it would appear we need to utilize ones that each have more than 4GB of RAM.

If possible can someone please give me a recommendation on the server setup for running multiple Magento 2 sites?  I know it is an open question.  I do prefer to run cPanel but am prepared to use anything that gives best performance.

If anyone could recommend a person/company that could configure such a server for me then that would be of great assistance too.

The server doesn’t have to be fully managed.  My tech friend can manage it but is having difficulty configuring one to suit my needs.

We did post some jobs on freelancer sites looking for someone to build the server but I fear that the applicants were looking for a quick job and didn’t have the required Magento experience.

Any help on this topic would be appreciated and I thank you in advance for your help.

Regards

Luke

[JLHC]

You may want to consider using LiteMage Cache instead of Varnish instead as it supports multiple Magento websites. LiteMage Cache is also faster than Varnish due to overall lower overhead. 

The only "downside" to LiteMage Cache is you will need to switch to LiteSpeed Enterprise Web Server which is a paid software and thus you will need to pay for the licensing fee. I do believe that it is worth it though due to the flexibility and the performance boost that it offers. 

[robfico]

You can run multiple Varnish instances on one server, just have each run on a different port and use a different VCL file. Set up a separate systemctl config file for each, run each on a different port, and you can have multiple M2 stores all using Varnish. 

[luke_hovey]

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@JLHC wrote:

You may want to consider using LiteMage Cache instead of Varnish instead as it supports multiple Magento websites. LiteMage Cache is also faster than Varnish due to overall lower overhead. 

The only "downside" to LiteMage Cache is you will need to switch to LiteSpeed Enterprise Web Server which is a paid software and thus you will need to pay for the licensing fee. I do believe that it is worth it though due to the flexibility and the performance boost that it offers. 

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Thank you for the detailed answer.  I will look into this in more detail as it does sound like a better option than Varnish.  Thank you.

[luke_hovey]

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@robfico wrote:

You can run multiple Varnish instances on one server, just have each run on a different port and use a different VCL file. Set up a separate systemctl config file for each, run each on a different port, and you can have multiple M2 stores all using Varnish. 

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This is great information.  Thank you.  I will pass to my tech contact and see what we can do.

[ibtisamdev8aef]

Hey Luke, i think you should try Litespeed and also you can host two magento websites on a managed server. Managed server along with Litespeed hosting will allow your websites to be stable and their performance and speed will also be satisfactory, along with it you dont have to worry about the maintenance and security of the server as your managed hosting service provider will take care of it.