magicalbob / dynamic500

How to set nginx up to proxy pass to a different server if the primary end point is down

Using a backup nginx server to serve 5xx error pages when proxy is down

Build local:nginx docker image first:

docker build -t local:nginx nginx

Then run docker-compose up to bring up the cluster.

Now curl 127.0.0.1:8000 and you should get "THIS IS SERVER 2".

Do a docker exec -ti nginx_nginx2_1 bash to get on the many end point and do systemctl stop nginx.

Do curl 127.0.0.1:8000 again and you should get "THIS IS SERVER 3".

If you then docker exec on to nginx3 and stop nginx on it, nginx1 will serve it's static 500 series error page.

nginx2 and nginx3 do not have to be nginx servers. They could be micro services (e.g. node or java apps). nginx2 being the micro service that does the day-to-day business, and nginx3 being a micro service that serves up 500 series pages (e.g. a service that checks if a planned maintenance is currently scheduled and presents a nice informative page for it).