windows 2012 with nginx

[Nem]

(I'm not sure if this is the correct forum for this, happy to move it if not)

I'm planning on upgrading my server to windows 2012. One thing I'm trying to wrap my head around is how to get things working together with nginx.

My intended setup is this:

I have a domain purchased through namecheap.com, but going to migrate it over to godaddy so it can be used with win2012.

We don't have a static IP, so am I correct in thinking that win2012 will automatically update the DNS record with godaddy if theres an IP change?

Currently, nginx is set up with reverse proxy so things like seafile (cloud service), couch potato, plex, sonarr, can be accessed by visiting www.domain.com/couchpotato (for example)

nginx listens on both port 80 and 443 as I have my own SSL certificate. Any requests to 80 get redirected to 443 so I'm always using SSL when I access any web service

I'm planning on making use of both vpn and remote web access when we move to win2012.

My question is, how do I get set up nginx so that those things can be accessed via domain.com? I'd like to be able to access remotewebaccess by visiting domain.com/remote for example. Is there a way to set up a reverse proxy (like with my other services) to accomplish this? Or is there another preferred method for getting all my services, plus the new win2012 ones, to work together?

Another issue, is that port 443 is used by nginx for all of those services. I heard that remote web access also uses 443, so there will be a clash there (I guess unless I set it up through nginx too)

Currently, I forward ports 80 and 443 to my server using the router, and domain.com just points to the routers IP. I'm unfamiliar with how win2012 actually makes use of a domain name that has been registered with it so I'm thinking I need to do things a different way?

What are the correct steps to accomplish a setup where I have nginx, rwa+vpn, my current services, all being accessed through domain.com on 443?

[tt2468]

http://nginx.org/en/docs/windows.html

I would more recommend apache (if it's for windows). There is also hyper-v or virtualbox, which you can use to run a virtual linux server for nginx/apache.

[Nem]

nginx is/has been running fine, and appeared to be more stable than the alternative (IIS). Would prefer not to run a VM just for the web server

 

The web server is already set up as I want it. My only question is how to incorporate rwa and vpn into the mix

[Madgemade]

It depends completly on how your VPN and Remote access work what protocols they use how they will connect etc.
If you want web based remote access, then what you want to do will only need minimal if any extra configuration in nginx.

 

In order to help you further we would have to know what VPN or remote access you intend to use as some are very easy to set up and involve little more than adding a new directary to the site root, others reqire expert levels to knowlege...

[Nem]

It depends completly on how your VPN and Remote access work what protocols they use how they will connect etc.

If you want web based remote access, then what you want to do will only need minimal if any extra configuration in nginx.

 

In order to help you further we would have to know what VPN or remote access you intend to use as some are very easy to set up and involve little more than adding a new directary to the site root, others reqire expert levels to knowlege...

 

I'm wanting to use the rwa and vpn built into windows 2012:

 

https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/jj730374.aspx?f=255&MSPPError=-2147217396

 

so yes, rwa is web based access

[Madgemade]

It looks like the only way would be to configure a reverse proxy to wherever the remote access page is but it looks to me like all of Microsofts stuff is very integrated into IIS and it may not be possible to use it or a very complex setup would be needed.
According to that documentation you will have to set your remote access to be accessible at a domain and not at a url so you would have your rwa at remote.domain.com and then you could use nginx reverse proxy to make it accessible at domain.com/remote also.
How does the remote access get hosted I would assume it is done by IIS as this whole Microsoft Remote Access thing looks very focused at beginners and seems to have a wizard feel to it (also as it is all built into the windows hosting ecosystem i.e IIS). You would need to run IIS at the same time to get it to work, this is perfectly possible but defeats the point of using nginx.

[Nem]

It looks like the only way would be to configure a reverse proxy to wherever the remote access page is but it looks to me like all of Microsofts stuff is very integrated into IIS and it may not be possible to use it or a very complex setup would be needed.

According to that documentation you will have to set your remote access to be accessible at a domain and not at a url so you would have your rwa at remote.domain.com and then you could use nginx reverse proxy to make it accessible at domain.com/remote also.

How does the remote access get hosted I would assume it is done by IIS as this whole Microsoft Remote Access thing looks very focused at beginners and seems to have a wizard feel to it (also as it is all built into the windows hosting ecosystem i.e IIS). You would need to run IIS at the same time to get it to work, this is perfectly possible but defeats the point of using nginx.

 

so if I set up IIS with my new godaddy domain name, I could set that up with rwa/vpn without too much trouble and have that working as intended. The only change I'd need to make is migrate all of my other services over to IIS, and set up reverse proxy there instead?

[Madgemade]

As your rwa/vpn seems to be part of IIS then it would certainly be easier to use IIS and not nginx, nginx is very advanced for what you need and I can't see any reason why you should use it especially on windows as its meant to be used on Linux systems and will work better there. If you have windows server 2012 then you are gaining nothing by running nginx on it as you could run that on any version of windows and nginx is unlikely to work well with windows server features like your rwa/vpn. The main reason that nginx and apache are available for windows is so that people who have home editions without IIS can still run webservers.

 

So it would be easier to run everything from IIS as that’s what microsoft want you to do and it will work as intended. It may even be totally impossible to use microsoft rwa/vpn with nginx any ways.