Nginx – have both apache and nginx serve the websites

apache-2.2nginx

I have an existing apache serving a couple of sites.

Now I have a new django site that's ajax intensive and so I'm planning to run it on apache's mod_wsgi but I'll use nginx as a reverse proxy.

Is it possible to have nginx be a reverse proxy to this new django site while make apache serve the other sites directly without using nginx?

Also if you can give me a rough setup on how I might do it if its possible.

Best Answer

The way I solved this problem is to have nginx reverse proxy all of the sites, but have them go to different apache virtual hosts listening on different ports.

nginx (in /etc/nginx)

proxy.conf

proxy_redirect off; 
proxy_set_header Host $host; 
proxy_set_header X-Real-IP $remote_addr; 
proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for; 
client_max_body_size 10m; 
client_body_buffer_size 128k; 
proxy_connect_timeout 90; 
proxy_send_timeout 90; 
proxy_read_timeout 90; 
proxy_buffer_size 4k; proxy_buffers 4 32k; 
proxy_busy_buffers_size 64k; 
proxy_temp_file_write_size 64k;

/etc/nginx/sites-enabled/default

server {
listen 80;
server_name django-site.com;
location / {
proxy_pass http://127.0.0.1:8085;
include /etc/nginx/proxy.conf;
}
}
server {
listen 80;
server_name regular-site.com;
location / {
proxy_pass http://127.0.0.1:8086;
include /etc/nginx/proxy.conf;
}
}

Apache Settings /etc/apache2/sites-enabled

django-site

NameVirtualHost 127.0.0.1:8085
<VirtualHost 127.0.0.1:8085>
    ServerName django-site.com

    <Location "/">
       SetHandler python-program
       PythonHandler django.core.handlers.modpython
       SetEnv DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE settings
       PythonOption django.root
       PythonDebug On
       PythonPath "['/django/django-site'] + sys.path"
    </Location>
</VirtualHost>

regular-site

NameVirtualHost 127.0.0.1:8086
<VirtualHost 127.0.0.1:8086>
ServerName regular-site.com
ServerAlias regular-site.com
ServerAdmin admin@regularsite.com
DocumentRoot /var/www/regular-site/
</VirtualHost>

In /etc/apache2/apache2.conf

# Include ports listing
Include /etc/apache2/ports.conf

ports.conf must list every port /etc/apache2/ports.conf

#Listen 80
#disabled for nginx
Listen 8085
Listen 8086

<IfModule mod_ssl.c>
    Listen 443
</IfModule>

Related Solutions

Nginx – How to Set Up as a Caching Reverse Proxy

I don't think that there is a way to explicitly invalidate cached items, but here is an example of how to do the rest. Update: As mentioned by Piotr in another answer, there is a cache purge module that you can use. You can also force a refresh of a cached item using nginx's proxy_cache_bypass - see Cherian's answer for more information.

In this configuration, items that aren't cached will be retrieved from example.net and stored. The cached versions will be served up to future clients until they are no longer valid (60 minutes).

Your Cache-Control and Expires HTTP headers will be honored, so if you want to explicitly set an expiration date, you can do that by setting the correct headers in whatever you are proxying to.

There are lots of parameters that you can tune - see the nginx Proxy module documentation for more information about all of this including details on the meaning of the different settings/parameters: http://nginx.org/r/proxy_cache_path

http {
  proxy_cache_path  /var/www/cache levels=1:2 keys_zone=my-cache:8m max_size=1000m inactive=600m;
  proxy_temp_path /var/www/cache/tmp; 


  server {
    location / {
      proxy_pass http://example.net;
      proxy_cache my-cache;
      proxy_cache_valid  200 302  60m;
      proxy_cache_valid  404      1m;
    }
  }
}

Nginx – Setting up nginx as proxy to apache; All good, but nginx doesn’t serve media

Add something like this:

location ~* ^.+\.(jpg|jpeg|gif|png|css|zip|tgz|gz|rar|bz2|doc|xls|exe|pdf|ppt|txt|tar|wav|bmp|rtf|js|ico|swf)$ {
  root /home/site/folder/static;
  expires 7d;

You will then have the files with those extension delivered from a different place. You can give then different expire dates and compression etc also.

The complete file would look like this:

server {

    listen 208.109.252.110:80;
    server_name netconf;

    autoindex on;


    access_log /home/site/server_logs/nginx_access.log;
    error_log /home/site/server_logs/nginx_error.log;

    location / {
    proxy_pass http://127.0.0.1:80/;
    include /etc/nginx/proxy.conf;
    }

    location location ~* ^.+\.(jpg|jpeg|gif|png|css|zip|tgz|gz|rar|bz2|doc|xls|exe|pdf|ppt|txt|tar|wav|bmp|rtf|js|ico|swf)$ {
        root /home/site/folder/static;
        expires 7d;
    }
}

You might also want to add some more options to your files. Check out the following links for some special options for dynamic and static content and some overall security issues.