HAProxy is a reverse proxy.
this post was submitted on 29 Jun 2023
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As mentioned it’s a stupid question, it’s just all of this talk of Nginx got me confused that I need to have it on proxmox or everything will crumble
The purposes of reverse proxies vary.
One of the main reasons is that you want to host multiple services on the same IPv4 and port since you usually only get one IPv4 (works for IPv6 too but there getting more than one from your hoster is a lot easier). This is known as name-based virtual hosting.
Another thing that is often (but not always) handled by a reverse proxy is SSL/TLS termination. That way the actual application doesn't have to worry about the certificates or crypto-related security updates. Sometimes TLS is used again on the bit between the reverse proxy and the backend server but if they are both on the same physical machine that bit is often skipped.
There are also other services such as rate limiting, caching or fully featured Web Application Firewalls (WAF) and of course CDNs that come in reverse proxy form but you shouldn't need to worry about those too much for a small personal website that isn't used by thousands of users.
This answer says it all. A reverse proxy dispatches HTTP requests to several "backend" services (your applications), depending on what domain name is requested in the HTTP request headers. For example using Apache as a reverse proxy, a config block such as
<VirtualHost *:443>
ServerName media.example.org
...
ProxyPass "/" "http://127.0.0.1:8096/"
</VirtualHost>
will redirect requests made on port 443 with the HTTP header Host: media.example.org (for example a request to https://media.example.org/my/page) to the "backend" service listening on 127.0.0.1 (local machine), port 8096 (which may be a media server, a wiki, ...). This way you only have to expose ports 80/443 to the outside network, and the reverse proxy will take care of dispatching requests to the correct "backend" service.
Most web servers can be used as reverse proxies.
In addition, since all requests go through the proxy, it is a good place to manage centralized logging, SSL/TLS certificates, access control such as IP whitelisting/blacklisting, automatic redirects...
Thank you so for tolerating my question and the informative answer
A reverse proxy can still be useful internally by allowing you to collect many different services under one name. It can greatly reduce your certificate management as well. I can’t think of much else you’d gain though.
But you don’t NEED one. I manage my home network without one, and I have two dozen machines, counting VMs. Gotta vpn to get to anything, except game servers and SMTP. Nothing wrong with that approach.
I did avoid them for a long time. Once I started to figure out how to self certify for https NPM became very helpful. DNS challenge does not require you to open any ports. you need a domain that supports dns challenge, though. Pointing cname to local ip of reverse proxy. And some routers may require rebind protection entry for that domain. Afterward: https and nice names for all my local only services.