49 lines
2.4 KiB
Markdown
49 lines
2.4 KiB
Markdown
+++
|
|
noatcards = True
|
|
isdraft = False
|
|
weight = 90
|
|
+++
|
|
|
|
# Reverse proxy (web server)
|
|
|
|
## Reverse proxy (web server) introduction
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
[Source: Wikipedia](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Proxy_concept_en.svg)
|
|
|
|
A reverse proxy is a web server that centralizes internal services and provides unified interfaces to the public. Requests from clients are forwarded to a server that can fulfill it before the reverse proxy returns the server's response to the client.
|
|
|
|
## Reverse Proxy benefit
|
|
|
|
Additional benefits include:
|
|
|
|
- Increased security - Hide information about backend servers, blacklist IPs, limit number of connections per client
|
|
- Increased scalability and flexibility - Clients only see the reverse proxy's IP, allowing you to scale servers or change their configuration
|
|
- SSL termination - Decrypt incoming requests and encrypt server responses so backend servers do not have to perform these potentially expensive operations
|
|
- Removes the need to install [X.509 certificates](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X.509) on each server
|
|
- Compression - Compress server responses
|
|
- Caching - Return the response for cached requests
|
|
- Static content - Serve static content directly
|
|
- HTML/CSS/JS
|
|
- Photos
|
|
- Videos
|
|
- Etc
|
|
|
|
## Load balancer vs reverse proxy
|
|
|
|
- Deploying a load balancer is useful when you have multiple servers. Often, load balancers route traffic to a set of servers serving the same function.
|
|
- Reverse proxies can be useful even with just one web server or application server, opening up the benefits described in the previous section.
|
|
- Solutions such as NGINX and HAProxy can support both layer 7 reverse proxying and load balancing.
|
|
|
|
## Disadvantage(s) : reverse proxy
|
|
|
|
- Introducing a reverse proxy results in increased complexity.
|
|
- A single reverse proxy is a single point of failure, configuring multiple reverse proxies (ie a [failover](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Failover)) further increases complexity.
|
|
|
|
## Source(s) and further reading
|
|
|
|
- [Reverse proxy vs load balancer](https://www.nginx.com/resources/glossary/reverse-proxy-vs-load-balancer/)
|
|
- [NGINX architecture](https://www.nginx.com/blog/inside-nginx-how-we-designed-for-performance-scale/)
|
|
- [HAProxy architecture guide](http://www.haproxy.org/download/1.2/doc/architecture.txt)
|
|
- [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reverse_proxy) |