Reverse proxy and routing

Goal

Publish your first application through the ShieldGate proxy with a host, a route, an upstream pool, and health checking.

The topology model

• Host — the public name clients use (app.example.com) plus its TLS certificate.
• Route — a path pattern under a host (/api/*) that selects an upstream.
• Upstream — one or more backend servers that actually serve the traffic.

One host can fan out to many upstreams by path; many hosts can share one upstream.

Steps

1. Open Topology in the console.
2. Create the upstream with your backend addresses and a health check path (/health is conventional).
3. Create the host with its domain name and certificate.
4. Add a route mapping the path pattern to the upstream.
5. Publish.

Load distribution and health

With multiple upstream servers, requests are distributed across healthy ones. A server failing its health check is taken out of rotation automatically and returns when it recovers — no publish needed.

Verify

• Browsing the host name returns your application through the proxy.
• Stopping one backend removes it from rotation; traffic continues via the others.

Pitfalls

• The proxy needs to resolve and reach the upstream addresses from its network position, not yours.
• A route without a matching host does nothing — check host spelling when a route "does not fire".