Most organizations adopt CDNs or HTTP caching proxies to boost the performance and scalability of their web platforms. But there’s another powerful advantage that often goes underused: centralized observability.

This presentation will demonstrate how to go beyond the traditional performance benefits of a caching proxy like Varnish and turn it into a rich observability layer. You’ll learn how to unlock and extend the valuable metrics and logs already flowing through your proxy, and how to integrate them with tools like Prometheus, Loki, and Grafana. We’ll also cover how to bring consistency to your observability stack by standardizing metrics, logs, and traces with OpenTelemetry.

Since caching proxies and CDNs are designed to shield your origin servers from most requests, they become the most complete and reliable source of traffic insights. This session will show you how to take full advantage of that unique position—turning your proxy into both a performance accelerator and an essential source of observability insights.

As the Technical Evangelist at Varnish Software, Thijs Feryn focuses on web performance, software scalability, and content delivery. He demonstrates content-driven and technical messaging through presentations, videos, books, blog posts, social media posts, podcasts, and other media.

Thijs is a published author and wrote Getting Started with Varnish Cache and Varnish 6 by Example. As a public speaker, he has a track record of over 300 presentations in 22 countries, where he is often praised for his energetic and engaging presentation style.

As an evangelist, Thijs is also active in many open-source communities, most notably the Varnish and PHP community. He has contributed to various communities for over 15 years both technically and as an organizer and facilitator.

Prior to joining Varnish Software, Thijs Feryn spent 15 years in the web hosting industry, tackling web performance and scalability issues on a daily basis and evangelizing these topics.