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Standalone microservices and a reverse proxy

Use a reverse proxy to combine web application features such as response compression and URL forwarding with the easy deployment and configuration of Content Delivery standalone microservices. Refer to your web application server vendor's documentation to learn more about how to set up a reverse proxy in a web application.

While standalone microservices offer many important benefits, their standalone nature also means that they do not provide features typically found in a web application, such as response compression.

A reverse proxy that forwards incoming requests to the standalone microservices can make those kinds of features available to you. You will often place a web application that acts as a reverse proxy behind a load balancer, and connect to the web application using an HTTPS connection. By using HTTP when forwarding your requests to the standalone microservices, you avoid having to set up HTTPS for your standalone microservices, which is a cumbersome process, especially if you are more familiar with Microsoft Windows and .NET than with Java and JSP.

You can also create your own URLs for your clients to use, which the reverse proxy can transform into actual microservice URLs.

Finally, response compression in the web application can improve the performance of your setup considerably.