In this post, we will configure Nginx Server as a load balancer for Apache Tomcat. First, we will provide the configuration of nginx for proxying a single Apache Tomcat instance. Later, we will show how this configuration can be extended for load-balancing a set of Apache Tomcat Servers.

In your nginx server, populate the /etc/nginx/sites-available/default file with the following content (here we use Ubuntu 14.04).

server {
    listen nginx.example.com:80;
    server_name  nginx.example.com;

    location / {
        proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-Host $host;
        proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-Server $host;
        proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
        proxy_pass http://tomcat.example.com:8080/;
    }
}

Reload the above configuration file with sudo service nginx reload, you should see something like

 * Reloading nginx configuration nginx                                   [ OK ]

Then, hit http://nginx.example.com in your browser. You should see the default Apache Tomcat webpage.

Sources:

Mkyong

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