How To Configure Nginx as a Reverse Proxy for Apache Tomcat Server

There are lots of options when it comes to choosing a proxy solution for your Apache Tomcat servers, Apache HTTPD, HAProxy, and NGiNX are currently some of the most commonly used all around open source solutions.

Nginx is a popular open-source web server and reverse proxy, known for its high performance, stability, rich feature set, simple configuration, and low resource consumption.

In this quick tutorial we are going to show you how to configure Nginx as a reverse proxy for Apache Tomcat Server. The Nginx Server going to redirect all the traffics coming on port 80 to Apache Tomcat Server on port 8080

– To install Nginx Http Server use the below commands:

# yum install nginx # On centOS / RHEL
# apt install nginx # On Ubuntu

– Enable and start Nginx on system boot:

# sudo systemctl start nginx
# sudo systemctl enable nginx

– Let’s a create a new Nginx configuration file called tomcat.conf as below or you can edit the default Nginx configuration file

server {
    listen 80;
    listen [::]:80;
    server_name yallalabs.local www.yallalabs.local;# YOUR DOMAIN NAME

    location / {
            proxy_redirect      off;
            proxy_set_header    X-Real-IP $remote_addr;
            proxy_set_header    X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
            proxy_set_header    X-Forwarded-Proto $scheme;
            proxy_set_header    Host $host;
            proxy_pass          http://localhost:8080;# YOUR TOMCAT IP ADDRESS
    }
}

-Run the following command to test the configuration file for syntax errors

# nginx -t

– Finally, run one of the following commands to reload the new Nginx Configuration file

# nginx -s reload
# systemctl restart nginx

– If you installed Nginx on CentOS 7 or RHEL 7 and the Selinux is enabled you need to execute the following command:

# setsebool -P httpd_can_network_connect=1

We hope this tutorial was enough helpful. If you need more information, or have any questions, just comment below and we will be glad to assist you!

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