Reverse proxy in IIS to local TomCat

Question

IIS has several websites:

• domain1.com
• a.domain2.com
• b.domain2.com

There is also a TomCat running on

localhost:8087

The challenge is how to expose the TomCat externally as

b.domain2.com

What I did:

• Enabled Proxy in ARR in IIS

• Added Reverse Proxy URL Rewrite rules on b.domain2.com

  <rewrite>
      <rules>
          <rule name="ReverseProxyInboundRule1" stopProcessing="true">
              <match url="(.*)" />
              <action type="Rewrite" url="http://localhost:8087/{R:1}" />
          </rule>
        </rules>
      <outboundRules>
          <rule name="ReverseProxyOutboundRule1" preCondition="ResponseIsHtml1" >
              <match filterByTags="A, Form, Img" pattern="^http(s)?://localhost:8087/(.*)" />
              <action type="Rewrite" value="http{R:1}://femiscan.a2itsolutionsllc.com/{R:2}" />
          </rule>
  
          <preConditions>
              <preCondition name="ResponseIsHtml1">
                  <add input="{RESPONSE_CONTENT_TYPE}" pattern="^text/html" />
              </preCondition>
          </preConditions>
      </outboundRules>
  </rewrite>
  

What I see:

Locally if I navigate to

http://b.domain2.com 

my browser shows TomCat website as

http://localhost:8087 

(Why?)

Externally if I navigate in Chrome to

http://b.domain2.com 

it tries to tunnel to

http://localhost:8087

If I navigate in IE it returns 500 error (Fiddler: HTTP/1.1 500 URL Rewrite Module Error.)

Question: What am I doing wrong? Can it be done and how?

Answer 1

Your Action is set to Rewrite so it is rewriting the URL.

In IIS Manager:

• Right-click Server Farms, click "Create Server Farm". Give it some name.
• Put the fully-qualified domain name to your Tomcat instance in the "Server name or address" field
• Click "Advanced settings...", expand "applicationRequestRouting" and change httpPort to 8087
• Click "Yes" when prompted to create a rewrite rule
• Click the newly created farm under "Server Farms" in the pane on the left side of the window
• Open "Routing Rules" on the Server Farm feature view page
• Click the "URL Rewrite..." link on the right pane
• Remove the old attempted Tomcat rewrite rule
• Click "Add Rule(s)..." at the top of the right pane, choose "Blank rule"
• Give it a name
• In the Match URL pane:
  • Requested URL: Matches the Pattern
  • Using: Regular Expressions
  • Pattern: *
• Expand the Conditions pane, click "Add"
  • Condition input: {HTTP_HOST}
  • Check if input string: Matches the pattern
  • Pattern: b.domain2.com
  • Check Ignore Case
• In the Action pane:
  • Action type: Route to Server Farm
  • Scheme: http://
  • Server farm: (the name of your server farm)
  • Path: {R:1} (NOTE: This may need some tinkering but judging by your example it should work)
• Click "Apply" on the right pane and your