If you are reading this book, chances are you have already had to deal with the Apache web server, considering it is still a major player in the market. In fact, a lot of the administrators interested in Nginx are people who have encountered issues with the former: slowdowns, complexity in configuring, lack of responsivity at times, and a variety of other problems. Consequently, the first idea that comes to mind is to replace Apache with another web server such as Nginx. However, there is an alternative that is not often considered, as it sounds a little far-fetched at first—running both Nginx and Apache at the same time. When you look into it, this solution offers many advantages, especially for administrators looking for a quick and efficient solution to the aforementioned issues.
This chapter covers the following topics:
An introduction to the reverse proxy mechanism
The advantages and disadvantages of such an architecture
Discovering the proxy module...