Reverse Proxy Server 2: IIS back-end server

Uniform Server 5.0-Nano Reverse Proxy.

Uniform Server - IIS

Apache is an awesome web server. It will even run ASP applications. Just install Apache::ASP and you are ready to go. Alternatively, you could use that redundant IIS server sitting on your machine and run the appropriate ASP apps from it.

IIS Server

Hey! No way am I suggesting making it your main server. It needs to be put in its place and that’s as a back-end server. On the previous page you saw how easy it is to run Uniform Server as a proxy. Make the modifications to your main server and this gives you Apache and MySQL as a powerful combination, now proxy to IIS. OK, IIS sucks for anything but using ASP.Net, however at least you will have a set-up to explore.

Pain:

IIS is a pain when you try to tweak it; have a go at setting it as a proxy server and you will get some idea what I mean. Apache does it straight out of the box. In theory you should be able to run all your servers on port 80 and bind to different IP addresses. However IIS is a royal pain and grabs everything associated with the port it’s running on and that includes every IP address on the machine.

That said it is relatively easy to change the port it runs on, however it is version specific. Below I have listed the common versions. Full details for other versions can be found at Microsoft support.

Change IIS port

Change the IIS port for example 8080 using Internet Service Manager, each site must bind to port 8080.

Microsoft Internet Information Server version 3.0
Open Internet Service Manager. Double-click on the computer corresponding to the WWW service. On the Service tab, change the TCP Port field to the desired port number (8080). Click OK. Using the Internet Service Manager, stop and restart the IIS Services.

Microsoft Internet Information Services versions 4.0 to 6.0
Open Internet Service Manager or Internet Information Services (IIS) Manager. If necessary, expand the Web server that you want, and then expand Web Sites. Right-click the Web site that you want to change. Click Properties. Click the Web Site tab. Change the TCP Port Number in the TCP Port edit box (or click Advanced for multiple Port settings). Click OK to save the changes.

Load your ASP apps and check that they run.

Vhost Set-up

The set-up is similar to that shown on the previous page. Edit configuration file C:\server_a\UniServer\usr\local\apache2\conf\httpd.conf\httpd.conf

NameVirtualHost * <VirtualHost *> ServerName localhost:80 DocumentRoot /www ProxyRequests off <Proxy *> Order deny,allow Deny from all Allow from 127.0.0.1 </Proxy> ProxyPassReverse / http://localhost:8080/ RewriteEngine On # Add a rewrite rule for each .Net app you wish to proxy. RewriteRule ^/DotNetApp(.*)$ http://localhost:8080/DotNetApp/$1 [P,L] </VirtualHost>

Notes: Note: port 8080 If you set a different port for IIS use that

Depending on your application you may need to preserve host headers. Try something like this:

NameVirtualHost * <VirtualHost *> ServerName localhost:80 DocumentRoot /www ProxyRequests off <Proxy *> Order deny,allow Deny from all Allow from 127.0.0.1 </Proxy> RewriteEngine On ProxyVia Block ProxyPreserveHost On # Add a rewrite rule for each .Net app you wish to proxy. RewriteRule ^/DotNetApp(.*)$ http://localhost:8080/DotNetApp/$1 [P,L] </VirtualHost>

Notes: Note: port 8080 If you set a different port for IIS use that

Summary

It’s a shame! I have no examples for you to run, however the above shows the basic principals of proxying to IIS.

That really is the end of this tutorial series.

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Ric