REFERENCE INFORMATION

Varnish Virtual Registry (Orca)

Orca is a virtual registry that unifies, accelerates, and controls artifact access across all your registries.

Functions & Features

Learn more about the functions and features of Varnish Virtual Registry

Functions & Features

Core Function

  • Sits between CI/CD systems and artifact registries as a transparent proxy
  • Consolidates multiple registries into a single logical endpoint
  • Caches and serves artifacts locally to eliminate latency and backend load
  • Preserves upstream authentication and access control (no security bypass)
  • Configured via simple YAML (no pipeline changes required)

Artifact Acceleration

  • Local caching of artifacts near CI/CD runners
  • 90–99% cache hit rates typical at scale
  • Eliminates redundant downloads and speeds up builds

Multi-Registry Virtualization

  • Presents multiple registries as a single endpoint
  • Cross-registry caching (reuse identical artifacts across sources)
  • Removes vendor lock-in

Intelligent Routing & Failover

  • Route requests across registries and mirrors
  • Zero-error failover when upstream is unavailable
  • Traffic shaping and backend optimization

Cost Optimization

  • Reduces egress and backend load dramatically
  • Localizes artifact delivery across regions

Resilience

  • Continues serving artifacts during registry outages
  • Deduplicates concurrent requests (prevents thundering herd)

Observability

  • OpenTelemetry support for logs, metrics, and traces
  • Visibility into cache hit rates, latency, and traffic patterns

Run as:

  • Container (Docker)
  • Kubernetes (Helm)
  • Linux packages (DEB/RPM)

Scales:

  • Horizontally across clusters
  • Globally across regions
  • Without shared state or database

Packages & Platforms

Learn more about the packages and platforms of Varnish Virtual Registry

Packages & Platforms

Packages

Orca accelerates any HTTP-delivered immutable artifact, including:

Containers & Cloud-Native

  • Docker / OCI images
  • Helm charts

Language Package Ecosystems

  • npm (JavaScript)
  • PyPI (Python)
  • Maven (Java)
  • NuGet (.NET)
  • Cargo (Rust crates)
  • Go modules
  • Ansible collections and roles
  • Conan (C/C++)

System & OS Packages

  • Debian (DEB)
  • RPM

Source & Dev Artifacts

  • Git repositories

Platforms

Orca is registry-agnostic and works with both private and public sources, including:

Enterprise Repository Managers

  • JFrog Artifactory
  • Sonatype Nexus

Cloud Registries

  • Amazon ECR
  • Google Artifact Registry / GCR
  • Azure Container Registry

Developer Platforms

  • GitHub Packages
  • GitLab Package Registry

Open / OSS Registries

  • Docker Hub
  • npm Registry
  • PyPI
  • Maven Central

These are explicitly supported today and broadly extensible to any registry using standard HTTP semantics

 

Last updated 17 April 2026