Load Balancing TG with NGINX

Contents

• Load Balancing TG with NGINX
  • Using Nginx as a Reverse Proxy
  • References

Nginx is a fast and light HTTP server, reverse proxy, load balancer (and more).

Using Nginx as a Reverse Proxy

It’s pretty simple to get TurboGears set up behind a Nginx server so that it proxies requests to the CherryPy server. Here is a sample configuration that not only proxies to your TurboGears application, but serves static content with Nginx and load balances between two TurboGears application instances as well.

Todo

references CherryPy, update for TG 2.1.5

http {
    # boilerplate nginx config ...

    upstream mycluster {
        server 127.0.0.1:8080;
        server 127.0.0.1:8081;
    }

    server {
        listen 80;

        # static files
        location ^~ /static/  {
            root /path/to/YourProject/package;
        }
        location = /favicon.ico  {
            root /path/to/YourProject/package/public/images;
        }

        # proxy to turbogears app
        location / {
            proxy_pass          http://mycluster;
            proxy_redirect      off;
            proxy_set_header    Host $host;
            proxy_set_header    X-Real-IP $remote_addr;
            proxy_set_header    X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
        }
    }
}

Next you need to setup a couple TurboGears backends that will comprise the cluster:

Create a copy of your project’s production .ini file (prod.ini) Under the server:main section, find and change the following line:

port = 8080

to:

port = 8081

Start both instances of your app:

$ paster serve prod.ini &
$ paster serve prod2.ini &

That’s it! Nginx should now be passing requests across both backends transparently.

References

You can find more information and recipes for setting up Nginx on the English Nginx wiki.