Intro To Plone Stack

Webserver

Listening on ports 80 and 443, proxy requests to the Plone Frontend and Plone Backend.

Plone Frontend

Node server running on port 3000, hosts the default user interface for Plone. This process needs to have access to the Plone Backend service.

Plone Backend

WSGI process running on port 8080, is the server with Plone API. Even though it's possible to run it without a specialized database, it's better you to point to either a ZEO server or a relational database.

Database

Specialized database layer. It could be either a ZEO server or a relational database.

Basic Setup

All services running on the same server

Without a specialized database

Webserver -> Plone Frontend -> Plone Backend

With a specialized database

Webserver → Plone Frontend → Plone Backend → Database

Multi-server

Webserver and Frontend

Externally accessible on ports 80 and 443

Hosts web server and Plone Frontend processes.

Plone Backend

Hosts Plone Backend processes, listening on port 8080

Database server

Hosts either a Zeo server or a relational database. Most hosting providers offer managed relational database services with proper backup and replication, you should consider this as a primary option if you're not familiar with database management.