Set up Magento 2 with Redis, Varnish and Nginx as SSL termination

In this article, we will show you how to install Magento 2 on an Ubuntu 16.04 VPS with MariaDB, PHP-FPM 7.0, Varnish as a full page cache, Nginx as SSL termination and Redis for session storage and page caching.  This guide should work on other Linux VPS systems as well but was tested and written for an Ubuntu 16.04 VPS.

Login to your VPS via SSH

ssh [email protected]_server

Update the system and install necessary packages

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get -y upgrade
sudo apt-get -y install curl nano git

Install MariaDB 10.0

Install the latest MariaDB 10.0 server from the official Ubuntu repositories:

sudo apt-get install -y mariadb-server

When the installation is complete, run the following command to secure your installation:

mysql_secure_installation

Next, we need to create a database for our Magento installation.

mysql -uroot -p

MariaDB [(none)]> CREATE DATABASE magento;
MariaDB [(none)]> GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON magento.* TO 'magento'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'my_strong_password';
MariaDB [(none)]> FLUSH PRIVILEGES;
MariaDB [(none)]> \q

Install PHP 7.0, composer and all required PHP modules

To install the latest stable version of PHP 7.0 and all necessary modules, run:

sudo apt-get -y install php-fpm php-cli php-gd php-imagick php-mysql php-mcrypt php-pear php-curl php-intl php-xsl php-zip php-mbstring

Change few default PHP settings:

sudo sed -i "s/memory_limit = .*/memory_limit = 256M/" /etc/php/7.0/fpm/php.ini
sudo sed -i "s/upload_max_filesize = .*/upload_max_filesize = 128M/" /etc/php/7.0/fpm/php.ini
sudo sed -i "s/zlib.output_compression = .*/zlib.output_compression = on/" /etc/php/7.0/fpm/php.ini
sudo sed -i "s/max_execution_time = .*/max_execution_time = 18000/" /etc/php/7.0/fpm/php.ini

Composer is a dependency manager for PHP with which you can install packages. Composer will pull in all the required libraries and dependencies you need for your project.

curl -sS https://getcomposer.org/installer | php
sudo mv composer.phar /usr/local/bin/composer

Install Magento 2 from Github

Clone the Magento repository to the ~/myMagentoSite.com directory using the following command:

sudo git clone https://github.com/magento/magento2.git /var/www/myMagentoSite.com

Get the latest stable release, at the time of the writing it’s Magento 2.1.2:

cd /var/www/myMagentoSite.com

sudo git checkout $(git describe --tags $(git rev-list --tags --max-count=1))

Run composer to install all Magento dependencies:

sudo composer install

To continue with the installation you can either use the installation wizard or the command line, in this guide we will use the latter.

sudo bin/magento setup:install \
--base-url=http://myMagentoSite.com/ \
--db-host=localhost \
--db-name=magento \
--db-user=magento \
--db-password=my_strong_password \
--admin-firstname=First  \
--admin-lastname=Last \
[email protected] \
--admin-user=admin \
--admin-password=my_strong_password123 \
--language=en_US \
--currency=USD \
--timezone=America/Chicago \
--use-rewrites=1

If the installation is successful you will see something like below:

[SUCCESS]: Magento installation complete.
[SUCCESS]: Magento Admin URI: /admin_mejj1n

Run the crontab command to create a cronjob

crontab -u www-data -e

and add the following line:

* * * * * /usr/bin/php /var/www/myMagentoSite.com/bin/magento cron:run | grep -v "Ran jobs by schedule" >> /var/www/myMagentoSite.com/var/log/magento.cron.log

Finally, set the correct permissions:

sudo chown -R www-data: /var/www/myMagentoSite.com

Install and configure Nginx

Install Nginx from the official Ubuntu repositories::

sudo apt-get -y install nginx

Create a new Nginx server block with the following content:

sudo nano /etc/nginx/sites-available/myMagentoSite.com

upstream fastcgi_backend {
  server   unix:/run/php/php7.0-fpm.sock;
}

server {
    server_name myMagentoSite.com www.myMagentoSite.com;
    listen 80;
    set $MAGE_ROOT /var/www/myMagentoSite.com;
    set $MAGE_MODE developer; # or production

    access_log /var/log/nginx/myMagentoSite.com-access.log;
    error_log /var/log/nginx/myMagentoSite.com-error.log;

    include /var/www/myMagentoSite.com/nginx.conf.sample;
}

Activate the server block by creating a symbolic link :

sudo ln -s /etc/nginx/sites-available/myMagentoSite.com /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/myMagentoSite.com

Delete the default configuration:

sudo rm -f /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/default

Test the Nginx configuration and restart nginx:

sudo nginx -t
sudo service nginx restart

You should be now able to login to your Magento back-end by going to http://myMagentoSite.com/admin_mejj1n using the information you set when running the bin/magento setup:install .

Install and configure Varnish

Installing Varnish is as simple as running the following command:

sudo apt-get install varnish

From you Magento Admin dashboard click on the STORES link (left sidebar) -> Configuration -> ADVANCED -> System -> Full Page Cache
Unselected Use system value and from the Caching Application list, select Varnish Cache (Recommended), save the configuration, click on the Varnish Configuration link and click on the Export VCL for Varnish 4 button. The varnish.vcl file which we will use will be exported in the /var/www/myMagentoSite.com/var/ directory.

Flush the Magento cache with:

sudo php bin/magento cache:flush

Delete the /etc/varnish/default.vcl and symlink it to the exported varnish configuration.

sudo rm -f /etc/varnish/default.vcl
sudo ln -sf /var/www/myMagentoSite.com/var/varnish.vcl /etc/varnish/default.vcl

To change varnish port from 6081 to 80, we need to edit the systemd service configuration.

Create a new customexec.conf file

sudo mkdir -p /etc/systemd/system/varnish.service.d
sudo nano /etc/systemd/system/varnish.service.d/customexec.conf

paste the following:

[Service]
ExecStart=
ExecStart=/usr/sbin/varnishd -j unix,user=vcache -F -a :80 -T localhost:6082 -f /etc/varnish/default.vcl -S /etc/varnish/secret -s malloc,256m

and reload systemd units

sudo systemctl daemon-reload

Now we need to change Nginx listening port from 80 to 8080 and enable Nginx SSL termination with HTTP2, to do that open the Nginx configuration file and change it as follows:

sudo nano /etc/nginx/sites-available/myMagentoSite.com

upstream fastcgi_backend {
  server   unix:/run/php/php7.0-fpm.sock;
}

server {
    server_name myMagentoSite.com www.myMagentoSite.com;
    listen 8080;
    set $MAGE_ROOT /var/www/myMagentoSite.com;
    set $MAGE_MODE production; # or developer

    access_log /var/log/nginx/myMagentoSite.com-access.log;
    error_log /var/log/nginx/myMagentoSite.com-error.log;

    include /var/www/myMagentoSite.com/nginx.conf.sample;
}

server {

    listen 443 ssl http2;
    server_name myMagentoSite.com www.myMagentoSite.com;

    ssl_certificate /etc/ssl/certs/ssl-cert-snakeoil.pem; # change with your SSL cert
    ssl_certificate_key /etc/ssl/private/ssl-cert-snakeoil.key; # change with your SSL key
    ssl_protocols              TLSv1 TLSv1.1 TLSv1.2;
    ssl_ciphers               'AES128+EECDH:AES128+EDH:!aNULL';
    ssl_session_cache    shared:SSL:10m;
    ssl_session_timeout 24h;
    keepalive_timeout 300s;

    location / {
        proxy_pass http://127.0.0.1;
        proxy_set_header Host $http_host;
        proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-Host $http_host;
        proxy_set_header X-Real-IP $remote_addr;
        proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
        proxy_set_header Ssl-Offloaded "1";
        proxy_set_header      X-Forwarded-Proto https;
        proxy_set_header      X-Forwarded-Port 443;
        #proxy_hide_header X-Varnish;
        #proxy_hide_header Via;
        proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-Proto $scheme;

    }

}

If you don’t already have an SSL certificate, you can purchase a trusted SSL certificate here.

Restart Varnish and Nginx:

sudo systemctl restart nginx
sudo systemctl restart varnish

Change the base url to https and flush the cache

sudo bin/magento setup:store-config:set --base-url="https://myMagentoSite.com"
sudo php bin/magento cache:flush

If everything is setup correctly now you should be able to login to your Magento back-end by going to https://myMagentoSite.com/admin_mejj1n.

Install and configure Redis caching

Redis is a key-value in memory data store and we will use it to replace the default Magento 2 Zend_Cache_Backend_File backend cache.  Install Redis by running the following command:

apt-get install php-redis redis-server

To configure your Magento installation to use Redis for session storage open the app/etc/env.php file and change/add the following:

sudo nano /var/www/myMagentoSite.com/app/etc/env.php

change:

  'session' =>
  array (
    'save' => 'files',
  ),

with:

'session' =>
   array (
   'save' => 'redis',
   'redis' =>
      array (
	'host' => '127.0.0.1',
	'port' => '6379',
	'password' => '',
	'timeout' => '2.5',
	'persistent_identifier' => '',
	'database' => '0',
	'compression_threshold' => '2048',
	'compression_library' => 'gzip',
	'log_level' => '1',
	'max_concurrency' => '6',
	'break_after_frontend' => '5',
	'break_after_adminhtml' => '30',
	'first_lifetime' => '600',
	'bot_first_lifetime' => '60',
	'bot_lifetime' => '7200',
	'disable_locking' => '0',
	'min_lifetime' => '60',
	'max_lifetime' => '2592000'
    )
),

and to use Redis for page caching add:

'cache' =>
array(
   'frontend' =>
   array(
      'default' =>
      array(
         'backend' => 'Cm_Cache_Backend_Redis',
         'backend_options' =>
         array(
            'server' => '127.0.0.1',
            'port' => '6379'
            ),
    ),
    'page_cache' =>
    array(
      'backend' => 'Cm_Cache_Backend_Redis',
      'backend_options' =>
       array(
         'server' => '127.0.0.1',
         'port' => '6379',
         'database' => '1',
         'compress_data' => '0'
       )
    )
  )
),

Finally flush the cache again:

sudo php bin/magento cache:flush

Further Optimizations

To further optimize your Magento installation from you Magento admin dashboard:

1. Go to STORES -> Configuration -> CATALOG -> Catalog -> Use Flat Catalog Category, select Yes and click Save Config.
2. Go to STORES -> Configuration -> ADVANCED -> Developer -> JavaScript Settings and set both Merge JavaScript Files and Minify JavaScript Files to Yes and click Save Config..
3. Go to STORES -> Configuration -> ADVANCED -> Developer -> CSS Settings and set both Merge CSS Files and Minify CSS Files to Yes and click Save Config.
4. Consider using a CDN – Content Delivery Network

Do not forget to flush the cache:

sudo php bin/magento cache:flush

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