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Help understanding Reverse Proxies (infosec.pub)

submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/selfhosted

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I have a noob question but seem overwhelmed with all the information I get about it. Basically, why do I need a reverse proxy if all my services are not public? Every guide or video for self hosting there’s always talk of a reverse proxy, have been doing it wrong?

Here’s my setup: I have proxmox running with LXC containers and VM’s for different services some have docker. I have HAProxy on PfSense with a wildcard cert. and the built-in dns resolver, and I vpn home every time I need something.

Have I be going about this the wrong way? Would I benefit from Nginx or traefik? Or is HAProxy enough? Sorry for the stupid question, I’m like a kid with a new toy and overwhelming myself.

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[–] shrugal 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

In a sense reverse proxies are like DNS. You don't really need them (can just use IP addresses), but they can make using your services a whole lot easier. You can hide internal changes to your hosting infrastructure from the outside world for example, just like "hiding" IP address changes of your servers. E.g. if you change something about your self-hosted lemmy instance all links to it can keep working, because they link to the proxy. They can also handle SSL certificates, so the services don't have to do that themselves, making life easier for their devs.