Has anyone successfully put varnish in front of web service?

Question

I've got server app 3.2.1 on a mac mini server.  love the machine, but want to put varnish in front of the web service.  so far it's been a hassle.  I can't even get the 0000_any_80_site.example.com.conf file to listen on 127.0.0.1:80...
I start varnish on port 8081, confirm it is running, tell it to look at the backend and apache won't talk to it.  I've added the "Listen 127.0.0.1:80" directive to the http_server_app.conf file in the /Library/Server/Web/apache2/Config folder. 
I tried to edit the any_80 conf file for the virtual host I want to test, and I've tried it all.  I've tried to change the <VirtualHost *:80> to <VirtualHost 127.0.0.1:80>, I've added the Listen 127.0.0.1:80 line to the conf file, and no matter what, varnish reports that the backend is sick and it can't get the file.
To clarify, I browse to the virtual host's domain and add 8081, so the browser is site.example.com:8081 and when going I get varnish responses, but varnish says it can't backend to respond.  Varnish is set up to probe 127.0.0.1 on port 8081.
has anyone done this successfully?

Answer 1

I'm using varnish 4.0.0 installed via homebrew.  Here's the backend definition from the vcl:
backend server1 {
  .host = "127.0.0.1";
  .port = "80";
  .max_connections = 300;
  .probe = {
  #.url = "/";
  .request =
  "HEAD / HTTP/1.1"
  "Host: localhost"
  "Connection: close";     
  .interval = 5s; # check the health of each backend every 5 seconds
  .timeout = 1s; # timing out after 1 second.
  # If 3 out of the last 5 polls succeeded the backend is considered healthy, otherwise it will be marked as sick
  .window = 5;
  .threshold = 3;
  .first_byte_timeout     = 300s;   # How long to wait before we receive a first byte from our backend?
  .connect_timeout        = 5s;     # How long to wait for a backend connection?
  .between_bytes_timeout  = 2s;     # How long to wait between bytes received from our backend?