Reverse Proxy for orion - hints, errors and infos

tester1112

Hello together,


here some info regarding the use of a reverse proxy to access the 
orion webconsole. As well, as some questions and 'improvements' 
for 'better code quality by solarwind'.


For customer a scenario is needed:

https://<domain>/solarwind -> http://<internal IP>:20080

while under the internal IP Solarwind Orion is running.

Now, I used Apache 2.2.11 as a reverse Proxy with 
mod_proxy and mod_proxy_html modules.
The proxy configuration is:

    ProxyPass /solarwind/ http://172.23.56.1:20080/
    ProxyHTMLURLMap http://172.23.56.1:20080 /solarwind
    <Location /solarwind/>
        ProxyPassReverse /
        ProxyHTMLURLMap / /solarwind/
        ProxyHTMLURLMap /solarwind /solarwind
        ProxyHTMLURLMap //<![CDATA[ <!--<![CDATA[-->
        ProxyHTMLURLMap //]]> <!--//]]>-->
        ProxyHTMLURLMap //--> <!--//-->
        ProxyHTMLURLMap // <!---->
        RequestHeader    unset  Accept-Encoding
        RequestHeader set Referer http://172.23.56.1:20080/
    </Location>

This will work to show the GUI partly. Now comes the first trick 
to avoid errors by bad programming (sorry solarwind...). 
While some images and scripts are refered through an 'unknown' 
(maybe the solarwind own ISAPI Proxy Rewrite dll) mechanism, 
they will not load. So create under your apache documentroot a 
copy of the solarwind install folder from IIS inetpub, and refer to 
it with:
       Alias /Orion        /ServerApplications/SolarWinds/Orion
       <Directory /ServerApplications/SolarWinds/Orion>
            Order allow,deny
            Allow from all
       </Directory>
 This fixes some problems, mainly with css and images.

The second bad code parts are the In-Script comments used, 
e.g. //<![CDATA[. I showed a way to rewrite them in above 
proxy configuration. But there are still some left. 
Use FF error console to find them.

The last error will occure, when you want to see the nodes. 
Then the server will bring up an error 'Server error: The server 
method 'GetTreeSection' failed.'. This function seems also be 
used when selected 'Overview'. You CAN show without problems 
the single nodes. This seems working.



Maybe another user has some hints to avoid above mention 
problems. Mainly the problem with the Server error.
(Use of apache is needed, no other proxy server will be available)


best regards

oiram

Another approach would be to server all public HTTP requests to the Orion through Apache and using Rewrite Engine. What you would need to do is (example!!! - needs adjustments):

1. make sure your Apache has following

rewrite_module
proxy_module

2. configure virtual host on Apache, something like that

<VirtualHost    *:80>

ServerName nms.domain.com
ServerAdmin admin@nms.domain.com
DocumentRoot /some/location/orion
Options +FollowSymlinks
ProxyVia On
</VirtualHost>


3. in above location (at least I use this approach - you can put that in above vhost configuration if you like but this way you won't need to restart Apache every time you want to do something) create file .htaccess and put something like that in it

RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteRule (.*) http://ORION-IP:80/$1 [P,L]


I do hope this will help with configuration. There are still some issues with this approach but these are being worked on by Development.