Serving multiple nodejs sites with nginx which ports should I be starting apps on

Question

I have multiple nodejs apps from different domains that I am serving from the same server with nginx. I am currently starting each app on a different port say 5000, 5001, 5002 ect. Then using nginx proxy_pass to serve them from the ssl port 443 like so:

server {
    listen 443 ssl http2;
    listen [::]:443 ssl http2;
    server_name mydomain.com;

    ssl_certificate /etc/letsencrypt/live/mydomain.com/fullchain.pem;
    ssl_certificate_key /etc/letsencrypt/live/mydomain.com/privkey.pem;
    ssl_protocols TLSv1.1 TLSv1.2;
    include snippets/ssl-params.conf;

    location / {
        proxy_set_header X-Real-IP $remote_addr;
        proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
        proxy_set_header X-NginX-Proxy true;
        proxy_pass http://localhost:5000/;
        proxy_ssl_session_reuse off;
        proxy_set_header Host $http_host;
        proxy_cache_bypass $http_upgrade;
        proxy_redirect off;
    }
}

And I am setting up a block just like this for each domain/app.

I have a couple questions I guess:

What ports should I be starting the apps on so I can avoid conflicts. Are there standard ports that I should be using?
Is this the way I should be doing this or is there a better way to go about this.

I read that ports above 49151 are for arbitrary uses. Should I be starting my apps in those ports above 49151?

Any guidance would be appreciated here. I am a web developer and don't have a lot of experience with the server side of things.

score 0 · Answer 1 · answered May 10 '21 at 06:14

You can check what ports are currently in use by running ss -lnt on the server command line. Then you can choose any ports that are not used.

It is also good to start from the port number that your application server uses by default, and increase starting from that.

Since the ports are used on that particular host, there aren't really any restrictions other than already used ports.

Serving multiple nodejs sites with nginx which ports should I be starting apps on

1 Answers1