Configure Nginx Reverse Proxy on Ubuntu VMs + SSL Encryption

Hi folks! I recently just decided to host my own personal website on a cloud virtual machine. I've experimented a lot of things from doing it and now I'm more than excited to share some of my experiences. This article shows how I configured a reverse proxy and SSL encryption using Nginx.

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What is a reverse proxy?

It's literally another server that sits in front of our website server. That said, whenever a request comes from a client to our website server, it will be intercepted by the reverse proxy server.

Why do we even need one?

There are, of course, advantages of using a reverse proxy.

• Load balancing

• Protection from attacks

• SSL Encryption

• Caching

Setting up project

Key technologies used

1. Virtual Machine - A running virtual machine instance. There are many virtual machines available for rent such as Amazon EC2, Google Compute Engine, Azure Virtual Machine, etc.
2. Domain Name - A registered domain name. Domain registrars like Namecheap, Google Domains, and GoDaddy provide and let us manage domain names.
3. Web Application - A server application. View code example on github here.
4. Nginx - Open source software that's often used for web serving and reverse proxying.

How it works

Configuring Nginx as a reverse proxy

1. Install Nginx and make sure it runs successfully.

   $ sudo apt update
   $ sudo apt install nginx
   $ sudo service nginx status
   

2. Edit server configuration file in /etc/nginx/sites-available/.

   $ sudo nano /etc/nginx/sites-available/wildanazz.com
   

   
3. Make sure that there are no syntax errors in the server configuration file.

   $ sudo nginx -t
   

4. Enable the server configuration file by creating a link from sites-available directory to sites-enabled directory.

   $ sudo rm link /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/default
   $ sudo ln -s /etc/nginx/sites-available/wildanazz.com /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/wildanazz.com
   

Testing application

1. Clone a demo server application.

   $ git clone https://github.com/wildanazz/demo-web-application.git
   

2. Run it.

   $ sudo apt install nodejs && sudo npm install yarn -g
   $ cd demo
   $ yarn --frozen-lockfile && yarn start
   

3. Copy and enter the ip address of the running virtual machine in a browser.

Installing SSL/TLS certificate

Before installing SSL/TLS certificate, the registered domain name needs to be pointing to the running virtual machine.

1. Install Certbot to obtain a free SSL certificate.

   $ sudo snap install --classic certbot
   

2. Run this code to let Certbot edit Nginx configuration automatically.

   $ sudo certbot --nginx
   

3. Certbot can also renew the certificate automatically before it expires by running this code.

   $ sudo certbot renew --dry-run
   

Summary

In this article, I discussed how I set up Nginx reverse proxy server and added a SSL certificate for my website from the ground up. If you decide to host your own website on a virtual machine, I highly recommend you to utilize a reverse proxy server. If you have found something I could improve or that you would have done differently? Let me know in the comments.