If you are reading this book, chances are you already have some good knowledge of the Apache web server with its 51 percent market share (as of April 2013 according to a Netcraft Survey). In fact, a lot of the administrators interested in Nginx are people who have encountered issues with the former regarding slowdowns, being complex to configure, unresponsive at times, and has a variety of other problems. Consequently, the first idea that comes to mind is to replace Apache with an alternative web server such as Nginx. However, there is a possibility 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 a great deal of advantages, especially for administrators looking for a quick and efficient solution to the aforementioned issues.
This chapter covers:
An introduction to the reverse proxy mechanism
The advantages and disadvantages of the architecture...