Question

I am trying to use CloudBees PaaS (RUN@CloudBees) to consolidate essentially three different distinct uses under the same URL space:

• root (/) main landing, marketing page
• app (/app) java app running in CloudBees
• blog (/blog) another java app running in cloudbees or possibly outside (example.wordpress.com)

If I was doing it myself in a datacenter or in AWS I would setup a reverse proxy (possibly like Varnish and configure reverse proxy to map the URL space as follows:

• root (/): http://www.example.com/ –> CMS running as cloudbees app example-cms.cloudbees.net
• app (/app) java app running in CloudBees http://www.example.com/app -> app.example.com
• blog (/blog) similarly http://www.example.com/blog -> example.wordpress.com or exampleblog.cloudbees.net

How can I achieve the same with CloudBees. Can it be done? Is this too much to expect from a PaaS vendor?

Answer 1

An interesting problem, and a few solutions:

1. Use domains instead of paths (eg blog.example.com etc) – so you can use DNS to direct things
2. Build an app that essentially proxies traffic for you (this could run on cloudbees or elsewhere) – there are lots of ways to do this.
3. Use some routing/proxy service (like CloudFlare) which may let you set up routing rules (so it can proxy traffic).

My preference would always be for number 1 – DNS is a great way to do things like this.
You can with this approach have /blog similar Urls in your paas application, and have it do a 302 redirect to the real blog.example.com – that kind of gives you a bit of both.