Load balancing nodejs app

Question

I am currently deploying an instance of nodejs app to server, for loadbalancing I am using phusion passenger, which I find really handy. Now I am wondering do I also need an nginx server in front of phusion passenger app, if I deploy only one app in my virtual machine. The reason I was confused because in almost all the tutorial it was suggested to use nginx with nodejs. However I am not sure what is the need of having nginx as I am using phusion passenger for load balancing and static file serving.

Answer 1

Phusion Passenger runs inside Nginx, so if you're using Phusion Passenger you're already using Nginx. There's no need to put another Nginx before it.