Reverse Proxy

  • a public face for your backend servers.
  • can be used even when you only have one server behind it, unlike load-balancer.
  • don’t have to reveal any information about the actual backend servers, IP addresses, etc.
  • directly serve static content without hitting your servers.
  • things like nginx can support both load-balancer and reverse-proxy.
  • disadvantages.
    • increases complexity.
    • single point of failure, increasing number of reverse proxies increases complexity.

References.