NGINX Reverse Proxy is working well. Using the cache it's possible to store static content on every Reverse Proxy to reduce traffic on the main server. I can set a time after the last access it will be removed - so far I know.
Having more Reverse Proxies - is it possible to sync the cache between the Reverse Proxys or preload a special file to all of them? And if yes, how I can do it?
This would be a good speed up for new bigger files.
You could locate the cache files and synch them across your servers with something like rsync.
To pre-load a cache you‘d have to curl each possible URL.
Related
I'm using Nginx as a reverse proxy for a Ruby on Rails application.
The application has 2 critical endpoints that are responsible for capturing data from customers who're registering their details with our service. These endpoints take POST data from a form that may or may not be hosted on our website.
When our application goes down for maintenance (rare, but we have a couple of SPOF services), I would like to ensure the POST data is captured so we don't lose it forever.
Nginx seems like a good place to do this given that it's already responsible for serving requests to the upstream Rails application, and has a custom vhost configuration in place that serves a static page for when we enable maintenance mode. I figured this might be a good place for additional logic to store these incoming POST requests.
The issue I'm having is that Nginx doesn't parse POST data unless you're pointing it at an upstream server. In the case of our maintenance configuration, we're not; we're just rendering a maintenance page. This means that $request_body¹ is empty. We could perhaps get around this by faking a proxy server, or maybe even pointing Nginx at itself and enabling the logger on a particular location. This seems hacky though.
Am I going about this the wrong way? I've done some research and haven't found a canonical way to solve this use-case. Should I be using a third-party tool and not Nginx?
1: from ngx_http_core_module: "The variable’s value is made available in locations processed by the proxy_pass, fastcgi_pass, uwsgi_pass, and scgi_pass directives when the request body was read to a memory buffer."
I am reading but having hard time understand difference between the two. I am using Heroku for my apps and until now I was using NGINX to serve my content. I precompressed my static files to gzip and served them like that, turning off dynamic compression in NGINX config file.
Now I am learning about Cloudflare CDN. As I see it is also serving static content. Is there any point in using both NGINX and Cloudflare, what would be the benefits?
How does a flow of that goes when user visits the website?
Would it be:
End User -> Cloudflare DNS -> CDN -> NGINX -> Heroku
End User <- Cloudflare DNS <- CDN <- NGINX <- Heroku
Cloudflare does not serve static content itself. It only caches content originally served by some other server. You still need that other server -- known as your "origin server". You might still use nginx as your origin server. By putting Cloudflare in front of it, you can make your site faster and more secure, but Cloudflare does not replace your server.
From, How does Cloudflare work?:
The Short Answer, Cloudflare protects and accelerates any website online. Once your website is a part of the Cloudflare community, its web traffic is routed through our intelligent global network.
In terms of differences, you can't directly compare Nginx with a CDN (a group of services including Nginx), you can create a CDN using Nginx.
I have server with nginx and one working app. I want to add several apps to this servers. I would like to assimilate a few things for myself.
What is the difference between load balancer and reverse proxy?
In which situations should I use the first, and in which situations should I use the second?
What should I use if my sites are static, and what if not static?
And additionally it would be a big plus to hear about containers in the context of several sites for nginx
Differences between load balancer and reverse proxy
A reverse proxy accepts a request from a client, forwards it to a server that can fulfill it, and returns the server’s response to the client.
A load balancer distributes incoming client requests among a group of servers, in each case returning the response from the selected server to the appropriate client.
Taken from nginx docs
TL;DR :
Reverse proxying is about : routing requests to the correct server using the domain name
Load balancing is about : distributing load to multiple instances
What should I use if my sites are static, and what if not static?
You can combine an HTTP reverse proxy + load balancing with both static and non static web apps, so it depends.
And additionally it would be a big plus to hear about containers in the context of several sites for nginx
I recommend one nginx container per app / site + a dynamic reverse proxy, traefik in particular (http://traefik.io)
You need a reverse proxy to route the incoming traffic to the proper application taking into account the content of the original request (and rules that you may define).
When the target application(s) is determined, you will need to load balance them in order to distribute the amount of work across them.
Both tasks can be done by software like classic nginx, apache, haproxy, etc or by those that are designed for the microservices world, like fabio, traefik and others.
Is it possible to use "cloudflare" as a reverse proxy for hosting several websites on the same host machine but on different ports?
Cloudflare can replace some of the features of Nginx, specifically:
Caching resources
Rate limiting and protecting your website
Redirecting access to your website to another server
But you still need Nginx or another web server for the following tasks:
Handling the TCP connections between Cloudflare and the server which generates the response (+ HTTPS should be used)
Generating the actual response, via FastCGI (PHP, Python, Ruby, etc.) or just delivering a file/resource (server and location blocks in Nginx)
Setting the correct headers for the response, for caching and content type (Cloudflare relies on these)
Cloudflare does not support sending your requests to specific ports on the origin host - but that would still not help you much, because Cloudflare has a very specific feature set, and generating responses is not part of them, which is why you need a web server.
If you want to reduce the work needed to maintain Nginx, you can restrict Nginx to only reply to requests by Cloudflare and do the rate limiting and some other tasks in Cloudflare.
Okay, so I know there is a lot of questions about Nginx Reverse Proxy but I don't understand any of the answers. I read the documentation on Nginx's website and I kind of get it but need some help.
So here is what I want.
Visitor ---> Nginx Reverse Proxy ---> Nginx Server (Website)
I know that you can get the reverse proxy to listen to a remote server, but I can't find the configuration files that I want. I also want to show a static html page when passing through the Nginx Reverse Proxy. So like a page that says "Hosted by this company", like Cloudflare does. I asked someone and they told me if I put the html file on the reverse proxy server then it'll show up when the visitor goes through the server, but I don't understand that concept, how do I get that static html to show up? And what will be the correct configuration be for this? I imagine it'll be different from a normal remote server configuration.
Thanks in advance!
In Nginx reverse proxy configuration it is possible to make some urls to be served from reverse proxy itself without going to source server.
Take a look at the following article: https://www.cevapsepeti.com/how-to-setup-nginx-as-reverse-proxy-for-wordpress/
In this article you can see in virtual.conf lines 51-55 that error_pages are served directly from reverse proxy, while other assets are fetched from source server first. Cloudflare employs the same concept. I hope this helps.