Case Study: University of Wuppertal achieves faster page loads, high availability and robust video‑on‑demand with Varnish Software

BUW uses Varnish Enterprise to boost performance and strengthen its streaming capabilities

The University of Wuppertal, a German university serving about 23,000 students and 2,650 staff, ran some 400 departmental subdomains on a centralized TYPO3 CMS cluster that suffered from slow, PHP-driven page loads. After relying on a single open‑source Varnish cache for five years, IT recognized that this created a single point of failure, and the COVID‑19 shift to fully online learning put new pressure on their video‑on‑demand platform and overall resilience.

They moved to Varnish Enterprise, deploying a two‑node Varnish cluster behind Kemp load balancers with a VCL review and centralized management (VAC), and implemented a Varnish‑based VoD solution delivered and tested within weeks. The change cut page load times from as much as 1.6s (uncached) and ~900ms (TYPO3 cache) to about 300ms with Varnish, avoided additional server purchases by improving capacity, and provided redundant caching that maintains availability during outages while supporting faster streaming and other use cases.

University of Wuppertal

Christian Nölle

Head of Department , Center for Information and Media Processing