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Agents and Reverse Proxy Servers

See any of the following topics to manage your CA SiteMinder® agent that is deployed on reverse proxy servers:

How Reverse Proxy Servers Work with CA SiteMinder®

A reverse proxy server is a proxy server that acts on behalf of an enterprise to forward requests to the internal network of an organization. The reverse proxy server allows clients to access resources on backend servers (those servers behind a firewall).

Reverse proxy servers provide the following advantages:

CA SiteMinder® agents that are installed on the reverse proxy server can protect resources on backend servers. The following illustration shows a network with a reverse proxy server using a CA SiteMinder® agent:

Graphic showing how a SiteMinder Agent Interacts with a Reverse Proxy Server to Protect Resources

CA SiteMinder® Secure Proxy Server

For users who require a more sophisticated reverse proxy solution, CA SiteMinder® SPS provides the following benefits over the Apache or Oracle iPlanet-based CA SiteMinder® Reverse Proxy Agent:

SM_PROXYREQUEST HTTP Header for CA SiteMinder® Processing with Secure Proxy Server

CA SiteMinder® SPS introduces a new layer in the traditional CA SiteMinder® architecture. This layer forwards or redirects all requests to destination servers in the enterprise.

When CA SiteMinder® SPS processes a request, the URL requested by the user is preserved in an HTTP header variable named SM_PROXYREQUEST. Other applications that require the original URL requested by a user before CA SiteMinder® SPS proxied the request can use this header.