If you’re a server admin, you probably have a web server of your choice like Apache, or Nginx. Apache is a well-known web server since the 1990s. Nginx was first developed in 2004 and quickly gained traction due to its lightweight memory footprint and fast processing speed for static HTML files.

Both Apache and Nginx support virtual hosting, which means you can host multiple websites or web applications on the same server. However, you will encounter situations in which you have an existing web server running, but a particular web application requires using a different web server. Port 80 or 443 on the public IP address can be used by only one process. If Apache is using the port, then Nginx can’t use (or bind to) it. So what can you do?

You can configure Nginx as a reverse proxy to Apache, so Nginx can redirect HTTP requests to Apache. In my experience, I found that this isn’t always the best way because it has once caused weird problems that I cannot troubleshoot. Instead, I prefer to use HAProxy as a reverse proxy for both Nginx and Apache. HAProxy is a free, open-source high availability load balancer and proxy server for TCP and HTTP-based applications.

#centos #debian #linux server #ubuntu #apache #haproxy #nginx