This is a pretty simple question, but one that I'm having trouble finding a good "best-practices" answer.
When using Varnish, do most small-ish sites install it side-by-side on the same server as their web-app? Or should it be installed on it's own server?
What are the benefits/ramifications of each?
Best Answer
It depends on the traffic you're serving and how much memory you can afford to give it. If you have a 16GB server and apache is taking up 4GB and mysql 8GB and you want to leave 2GB around for the OS/fs-cache then the question becomes "is 2GB enough for my usage of varnish".
The "best practice" is to do the math.