Question

My Apache 2.2.9 runs on Debian Lenny 5.0.1 with 2 network interfaces, one interface has a public IP and hostname, the other is not configured. This machine caters to services that run on the LAMP stack.

There is a Windows Server 2008 SP2 machine running IIS 7 that serves our ASP.net needs. The box can be configured to be either on a local or a public IP and has 2 network interfaces as well.

Both the servers serve over SSL and Apache is public facing.

Is there a way when a request such as https://foo.com/contentfromiis/ is made the browser can serve contents from the IIS server without using a redirect and transferring to https://bar.com/iwastransferedhere/. In other words the user must not /experience/ any switch happening. Thanks!

Answer 1

If I understand your situation correctly, I believe you may be able to use mod_proxy to do what you want. Basically, Apache would act as a “reverse proxy” for the requests that you actually want to serve from IIS. Note that a reverse proxy isn’t like a normal HTTP proxy. From the mod_proxy docs:

A reverse proxy … appears to the
client just like an ordinary web
server. No special configuration on
the client is necessary. The client
makes ordinary requests for content in
the name-space of the reverse proxy.
The reverse proxy then decides where
to send those requests, and returns
the content as if it was itself the
origin.