Reverse Proxy for NGINX

When hosting services on NGNIX and other web servers, a reverse proxy can significantly improve the performance, resilience, scalability and security of application delivery. The key features of a reverse proxy are:

• SSL Offload - Remove the security processing and administration overhead from NGNIX servers to the reverse proxy
• Web Acceleration - Caching and compression of content on the Reverse Proxy along with optimizations such as HTTP/2 provide a better user experience
• Security - A Reverse Proxy can protect NGNIX and other resources by offering features such as single sign-on (SSO) and IPS/IDS
• Web Application Protection - A web application firewall (WAF) deployed on the Reverse Proxy can protect applications from well known and emerging threats
• Load Balancing - a Reverse Proxy can load balance user traffic between NGNIX and other servers based on multiple criteria such as server availability, load, request type and even geographic location.

Kemp LoadMaster ticks all the boxes for an easily deployed reverse proxy that secures and enhances the application delivery infrastructure. It is available as a virtual appliance that may be deployed on a local hypervisor, as a virtual appliance on major cloud platforms and as a physical device. Regardless of the deployment model, Loadmaster is a proven, easily managed, supported and fully featured Reverse Proxy for NGNIX and other web server environments.

In Fig 1. above, LoadMaster consolidates the core Reverse Proxy functionality into a single easily managed appliance. The performance, security, availability and scalability of the application environment is greatly enhanced by deploying LoadMaster as a Reverse Proxy for NGNIX.

Getting your LoadMaster Reverse Proxy for NGINX

LoadMaster is available as a 30 day trial or if you have traffic requirements of less than 20Mbit/s then you can have a LoadMaster for free. The trials are delivered as pre-built appliances for the major hypervisor platforms or if you wish, you can select the trial and free versions from the Azure and Amazon Web Services (AWS) marketplaces.

Configuring LoadMaster as a Reverse Proxy for NGINX

The LoadMaster documentation set provides guidelines on how to deploy and configure a LoadMaster appliance to proxy application workloads on NGINX.

LoadMaster Reverse Proxy Features

• SSL Offload – LoadMaster can offload the SSL processing workload from the NGINX servers and also provide a single point of administration for SSL certificates and security.
• Context Switching – Redirection of requests to back end servers based on the content of the request
• DDOS Protection – LoadMaster includes a snort compatible engine to offer DDOS protection for NGNIX servers
• Authentication – The Edge Security Pack in LoadMaster provides comprehensive authentication and single sign-on services for NGNIX
• Caching and Compression – LoadMaster uses caching and compression as a way to improve NGNIX performance
• SSL Redirect – Redirection of all non-HTTPS requests to HTTPS
• Intelligent Session Persistence – Multiple options available to ensure clients are load balanced to the same server for the session lifetime
• Web Application Firewall (WAF) – The LoadMaster WAF for NGNIX provides application level protection from common and day-zero vulnerabilities
• Global Load Balancing (GSLB) – Load balance NGNIX across multiple physical locations including cloud to provide disaster recovery failover and geo-aware traffic distribution.